Diamond's Mystery
by Speedy1236
Summary: After having given his promise to find and save a powerful treasure, Knuckles is hunted by a group of fanatic turtles. Now Knuckles and Sonic have to get through a path of cryptic puzzles and dangerous traps in time...
1. Rain

_Author's note:_

_This story is, albeit being a Sonic fic, in many ways, let's say, out of context. There will be no Robotnik, no Chaos Emeralds… Certainly there will be another story closer to the usual context from me again (already got something in mind, but one thing at a time. This time it's an experiment on doing something different)… Instead, this is tale of action and mystery, of secret puzzles and hidden treasures, of __fanaticism __and insanity, and of friendship and adventures._

_For the fans of the action and adventure parts, I promise they'll make a big part of this fic, be patient and survive the first introducing chaps, I need them! I'm trying to get some complexity to the plot, so not everything in the first chapters will make sense immediately. This is intentional, it's the mystery part… *grin*_

_

* * *

  
_

**Rain**

Branches caught his feet and he tripped, finding himself once again face-down on the hard ground. He pushed his sore hands in the mud and picked himself up again, groaning at ever new jolts of pain bracing of worn-out muscles forced through him.

He looked back when he stood swayingly, fearing his persecutors would appear behind him. He knew he couldn't have gotten far away from them. They would have noticed his escape and followed him. And he knew they were coming closer with every time he tumbled, with every time he hit the ground.

His breathing came raggedly gasping when he forced his legs to move. He noticed the pain of all his injuries only dully any more. Injuries of their tortures and of falling on his escape. His stomach hurt with emptiness that lasted for weeks now and his mouth felt dry as sand. His formerly bright red fur was now dull and painted with blood, sweat and mud. His gloves that had been white what seemed an eternity ago, now wore the same color as the dirty ground.

He brushed one of his long spikes out of his brow and staggered forwards. He didn't know where he was going, had not even the slightest clue where he was. He wanted home, wanted it so desperately that he felt like he could close his eyes and smell it. But this place wasn't home, it was far away from that.

But it was heaven compared to where he came from. And these people, beating him, asking questions. Questions he couldn't even remember. All he knew he had had no answers to them.

And now his enemies had decided he was useless and wanted to finish what they hadn't managed so far. He knew if they caught up with him, they'd kill him.

So he was running. Or what came closest to running he was still capable of. His exhausted body revolted against any kind of movement with waves of nausea and his tormented mind was craving for rest. His eyes wanted nothing more than close, not caring if he would wake up again.

But still existing pride and small remains of willpower couldn't allow for that. If he rested now, he would die. But he had a duty to fulfill, a very important one. One he had spent his entire life on. And there was a promise he had made, a promise of that kind you couldn't ignore.

Moreover he wanted to live, wanted to go back to the life he had had before. At home. With his friends maybe. He had never thought that he would crave for seeing _anybody_, but right now, as he seemed to be all alone in a harsh world pursued by people wanting to hurt and kill him, he wished to see one of his rare friends more than anything else. For the first time in his life, he felt helpless. Vulnerable. He had suffered enough, and certainly more than he could take.

He tumbled over a stone in his way and fell on his hands and knees once again. For a moment he hunkered on his bent knees, panting for breath, then pushed himself up like all the times before and forced himself to go on.

How long would he be able to take this? Standing up was getting harder with everytime he fell; with every one of his staggering steps the urge to give in to tiredness grew stronger and stronger.

But the knowledge that they must be close behind him was pushing him to powers he didn't have. Knowing that they were many and unharmed and that he was alone, injured and beat.

A drop of water fell onto his nose and he looked up. The sky was darkening with every minute, now far nearer to black than grey and the clouds were releasing their content. The cold water drenching his fur made him shiver, but maybe darkness and rain would give him some stealth. Although he doubted they'd lose his trail.

So he kept forcing himself forwards. Step after step, fall after fall. Along a path he neither knew nor cared where it led.

* * *

Sonic hated rain. To be honest, there weren't many things in the world he hated more than water and getting wet. Especially when the water was cold.

The droplets of rain felt hard when they smashed into his face. Sonic was running, running as fast as he could to get out of this bloody storm and his speed made the impacts of water drops on his skin feel like needles.

It was one of the days when the weather seems to have gone insane suddenly. It was early spring, the flowers and leaves of the trees all around were starting to grow to tiny new green, the days were getting longer and the beams of sunlight warmer.

At least that was what it had been like the last weeks. Sonic had spent them outside the most of the time. The blue hedgehog had been on a run all over the planet, to see new places and explore and have fun. It was his favorite free time activity and he needed it like food and sleep. It was what he lived for.

This morning the blue hedgehog had wakened very early because it had started to rain, and cold and wet sleeping wasn't any fun. So Sonic had turned home.

Now it was afternoon and much to the hedgehog's disgust the weather wasn't getting any better. Quite the opposite. The rain was about to become an adult thunderstorm. Sonic knew these signs of nature. Generally, he like thunderstorms, liked the sounds and lightenings. But only as long as he could watch this from a dry place.

Sonic reduced his pace when he followed the gentle hills of the forests in the Mystic Ruins. He was nearly there. The blue hedgehog stopped in front of Tails' house. From the outside, it looked more like a warehouse than a place to live at. It was a big, cubic building with a flat roof. The front wore a huge portal to the hangar of the Tornado and the workshop. Aside of it a small door led inside, the entrance for people.

Sonic walked up to the door. Beside it, a small control panel was situated. Sonic's fingers rushed over the numeric panel, he knew all of Tails' codes. The door slit open almost soundless when the security systems granted the hedgehog entrance.

Sonic stepped in and the door shut behind him automatically. The hangar was empty, the Tornado wasn't in here. What meant Tails wasn't either. Maybe the fox had gone for a ride.

Sonic paced the huge room to the inside stairs that led up to Tails' apartment in the second floor that covered a half of the upper part of the hall. The hedgehog stopped when he spotted a piece of paper that was pinned to the banisters. He picked it up. The top of the paper wore a date from last week. Sonic started reading.

_Hello Sonic!__  
I'm leaving this message here in case you come along and I'm out. I made some adjustments to the Tornado's engines and radar systems that should handle better now under bad circumstances. To test it out in extreme conditions, I followed an invitation of a group of scientists who work on a small outpost in the Twinkle Snow Zone. They asked me for a bit of help and some flying services. They agreed to give me free stay if I help them out. I think I'll be back at Thursday in two weeks in the earliest. Don't wait for me if you're bored. But I have to admit I'd be happy if I returned home and found some warm food…__  
Hope you're having a nice time too. Greetings, __Tails_

Sonic smirked when he put down the message. "Bad conditions? Well, he could have done that here too."

But probably the weather at the north pole was worse than here. Sonic grinned, thinking of Tails sitting in the cockpit of the Tornado wrapped up with a thick jacket torturing the poor plane through a snow storm. Certainly his foxy friend was having fun right now.

Thinking of the cold in Twinkle Snow drew Sonic's attention to the cold here and he noticed that he was shivering. The rain was cold and he was soaked wet. The hedgehog looked down, finding that he was standing in a puddle the water dropping out of his blue fur and quills had left on the floor. He pulled off his wet sneakers, socks and gloves, simply dropping them where he was, then went to the corner of the room underneath the stairway. Aside of a huge hammock and a stereo, a cupboard was placed on the wall. The two doors were plastered with photos and pictures.

Sonic smiled when he regarded them. Tails and Sonic himself sitting one on each of the Tornado's double wings and Cream, Amy and the Chaotix crew standing aside the plane. A few photos Tails had cut out of newspapers that showed Sonic fighting Dr. Eggman's robots, together with all of his friends and one that showed him as Super Sonic, shining in bright yellow.

But Sonic's favorite was one he had taken himself about half a year ago when he and Tails visited Knuckles on Angel Island. It showed the red echidna's completely puzzled face in a full-frame view. It was one of the most stupid and funniest pictures of anybody Sonic had ever seen. It was a result of Sonic waking Knux up when he had been taking a nap. With eyes just opening, the echidna had found himself face-to-face with a camera. The photo was considerably dumb, and always good if you needed a laugh. Knuckles had spent a few days chasing Sonic around and trying to beat seven shades out of the hedgehog for playing that trick on him, but finally he had been able to laugh about it as well.

The hedgehog opened the left door of the cupboard and reached for a pair of fresh socks and gloves. Then Sonic walked back to where he had left the wet stuff. He brought his socks and gloves up to the bathroom, tossing them into the box that contained things to be put into the washing machine, then hung up his shoes on the banisters to drip-dry on their own.

Two hours later, Sonic was whipping lazily in his hammock, a plate with chili dogs on his laps. He had made use of having the entire workshop for himself and turned on his stereo to the very top of the possible volume. Now the guitars were nearly blasting out the small skylights.

The blue hedgehog kept enjoying his personal concert as long as he could take the loudness, then he finally switched off the music, what resulted in immediate silence in the hangar. A big contrast to the noise before. It took Sonic's ears two minutes to get used to the suddenly quiet surroundings and notice the small sounds of rain drizzling on the roof.

He was somehow looking forward to the next week he would be here on his own. Seven days a huge house all for himself. If he stayed that long. One could never know that. Little did Sonic know that the peace should last for only a few more hours…


	2. Darkness

**Darkness**

A sharp blow of wind stroke from the left, pulling on the wing, trying to spin the plane over. Tails narrowed his blue eyes and counter steered, giving his engines a slight push for extra power. The Tornado stabilized a little, dancing almost elegantly through the storm. Tails lowered his head, trying to hide behind the glass of his windshield, as snowflakes were blown into the biplane's open cockpit. The young fox idly considered that he might have thought of the possible use of a closed cockpit for the Tornado. Out here it would certainly have been of use.

Back at home, or in almost every other zone, Tails loved his open plane, he liked the breeze in his face and the untainted view he thought he could never have through a barrier of glass. Right now, he was about to change that opinion.

The orange fox squinted down on his dashboard. His coordinates told him that he had made it almost back to the outpost, even through the blizzards the Tornado was the most reliable plane Tails could think of. A few miles, and he would park the plane in a dry hangar and allow himself a nice hot chocolate.

This was the good side of his current trip, the scientists in the small village he stayed at these days were glad about a new face and the variation in the certainly boring daily routine they had around here, so that Tails could benefit from their full hospitality. He still missed his home, most of all the temperatures back there...

At least the test flights he'd been doing here had shown that his new inventions had indeed made the plane much more capable of handling the cold surroundings. 40 degrees below zero was extreme, much colder was hard to find. And still the biplane handled amazingly good.

Thunder roared above his head, seconds later lightening flashed a brief brightness across the dark sky, giving Tails a glimpse of shapes of the thickly stapled clouds, their outlines leaving a ghostly image on his retinas after the short flash of light. Tails hated lightenings, but right now he was occupied enough not to think about them.

The wind had picked up again, shooting the snowflakes like little icy bullets against the glass and into Tails' face. The unsteady blows were throwing the Tornado in and out of balance.

Tails reached for his radio. "This is Tornado calling Camp West. Come in, Camp West."

"You alright up there, Tails?" The voice of a man was barely understandable though static and cracking sounds.

"I'm fine and coming in for a landing in a few minutes."

"Copy that, Tornado. Camp over."

Tails started to lower his flight, checking his instruments. This would be another blind landing. He had done an uncounted number of these during the last week and it was -

Yet another loud boom of thunder made itself known, almost in the same moment accompanied by another lightening flash and Tails yelped when a spear of light stroke down from above his head, painting zick-zack-pattern of afterimages on the sky, clearly aiming for the small biplane,

Tails franctically steered aside, but the crash came nonetheless, shaking the plane like a shockwave. Little sparks flickered on the Tornado's surface and the sounds of the engines, almost inaudible against the storm anyway, cut out completely. Every light in the cockpit went out.

"Hey!" Tails slammed against the dashboards. "Come on! You can't just leave me alone now!" Of course the plane didn't reply.

Tails carefully tried steering, finding that it did work not too bad. "Okay, don't panic, Tails," the two tailed fox tried calming himself. This was not the first emergency situation he came in. He reached for his radio. "Hey, do you hear me! Come in!"

The only reply was static.

Tails opressed a sigh and leaned out of the cockpit, trying to see something. No matter what. Something that could be used as a landmark, something to orientate. But the land below was almost as dark as the sky above, there was nothing to see. And his instruments were dead.

Tails sank back into his seat. Blind and deaf. And without engines. Great conditions to try a landing...

He couldn't see his altimeter any more, but was experienced enough to feel the sinking motion of his plane. A worryingly fast sinking motion coming to think of it. Tails clutched the control-stick with both hands, trying to keep his aircraft horizontally. As much as he could discern his position without seeing a thing.

The storm gave him a hard push again. Tails hastily tried to stabilize the plane, pulling a face as a new thunder and a new lightening boomed above him. He almost felt as if the weather was making fun of him.

Suddenly a shudder ran through the Tornado and it jumped upwards, Tails pulled his control-stick backwards, hoping to soften the rough landing.

The biplane hopped across the ground like a pebble on the water surface, then the left wing crashed into something solid with a loud noise, the force of the impact spinning the plane around, it's tail connecting with something else and it rolled backwards, pulling the whatever it had hit along until it came to a halt.

Tails let his head sink against the side of the cockpit wearily. He was still alive. Surprise enough.

For a few moments it was almost silent, as if the storm's noises had dulled. Tails noticed that there weren't snowflakes falling onto him anymore. He pulled his belt loose and wanted to stand up, when suddenly light flashed all around him and he lifted his hands to shield his eyes.

"Hey, is that what you call a landing?", someone asked, his tone a mixture of amusement and concern.

Tails blinked, squinting at the surroundings. He smiled weakly. So far about parking in the hangar...

"You okay, Tails?" Two Mobians in thick clothes were coming over to him.

Tails stood up and nodded. "I'm fine."

A yellow rabbit tilted his head up at the fox, his long ears folded under a wooly hat. "What kind of landing was that? You could at least have waited for us to open the door for you. Just look at that mess." He pointed to the left.

Tails followed his outstretched arm. The door, or what was left of it, had a big hole where the Tornado had smashed through it tail-first. Tails looked back and regarded his plane. It seemed as if the not so well landing had worked without any major damage.

"Sorry about that." The fox shrugged with an apologizing smile. "A lightening stroke and all my instruments and the engines died." He hopped down to join the others.

The second inhabitant of the outpost, a dog around fifty, rubbed his nose and regarded Tails. "So. Well. For a blind landing it was not too bad."

"I'm afraid I got an amount of charred circuits. I'll need a while to repair that." Tails sighed.

The rabbit put a hand on Tails' shoulder and shoved him towards the other side of the hangar. "Later. Now you first come inside and get yourself warmed up."

"You can fix your plane later."

"Okay." Tails smiled. "Sorry about the door..."

"Nah, don't beat yourself up. We'll fix it later."

* * *

Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beeeep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeep.

Something was beeping. Silently and faintly, but it didn't stop.

Sonic grunted and shifted sleepily as he pulled the blanket over his head. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. It had to be in the middle of the night and he was tired.

Beep-beep-beeeep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeep.

What the hell is that? Sighing deeply, Sonic cracked opened a green eye, peering out from underneath his covers. The living room was dark, but dim light filtered in through a small window. It didn't lead outside, but into the hangar downstairs. The small glow was red and pulsing and Sonic opened his other eye.

Beep-beep-beeeep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeep.

Sonic ran his fingers through the spikes on his head and sighed again, then stood up and walked over to the window to look down.

Beep. Beep. Beeeeeep.

The source of the small light and also of the beeping was the security computer. A red lamp was blinking, showing some sort of alarm going off.

Beep-beep-beeeep.

Sonic walked down the stairs to look at the screen. "What the hell do you want?", he addressed the computer, not in the best mood by now.

The machine didn't reply, but the screen showed a small text that told Sonic something outside had caused the alarm.

Had a lightening stoke and busted the thing? Or was there really something?

"Damnit!", Sonic muttered. Now he was too curious to just switch off the noise and go back to sleep. He went over to the banisters and pulled on his half-dried runners. They would get wet anyway again outside. It sounded like the rain had stopped, but outside everything was drenched now.

Sonic scrambled for a flashlight in the loads of shelves in the workshop, dropping stuff that lay in his way and he couldn't use on the floor carelessly until he found a small flashlight. Then he stepped out. He was welcomed by thick darkness.

But he wasn't alone. Instincts sharpened over years of being chased by dangerous robots again and again were as reliable as his eyes.

Those weren't a help right now, the hedgehog couldn't see anything but blackness. But his pointy ears twitched when they caught sounds far away.

Sonic switched on his lamp and moved the light over the area around. It looked like he had found the tiniest lamp on Mobius, its glow reached only a few meters before it lost itself in the darkness. Sonic moved around the house, but found nothing.

He switched off his lamp, it wasn't much of a help anyway. Better making use of his other senses. So Sonic followed the small sounds he could pick. They became louder and the hedgehog sneaked closer attentively. He stopped when he could make out words.

"So, we finally got you!", a male voice said with a decidedly gloating undertone.

"Did you really think you could get away? Fool!", another voice added.

It followed a dull sound like a thump or beat and a whimpering groan. Sonic listened as he frowned, silently moving closer. It sounded like someone was being beaten to pudding. He wouldn't just stand and listen through this!

He moved around a small hill and saw the shine of torches. Four people were standing in a circle around a heap that maybe was their victim on the ground to their feet. They were turtles, dark brown and yellow in color, wearing vests and high boots. Two of them carried bows, the other two the torches.

"Hey, you!", Sonic shouted, zipping away in the second he finished speaking.

It had been a smart move, his sharp ears told the hedgehog that an arrow cut through the air where he'd been standing instantly.

"I'm still heeere!"

Another arrow missed into the darkness.

"Who are you?", the one that had spoken first asked.

"Someone who doesn't like people hitting others."

After a few more arrows had missed, the persons spoke again.

"What do we do? We can't see him, but he can see us."

"Nice meta, buddy," Sonic remarked, rushing out of the darkness, hitting the two nearest guys, toppling them over. One torch died out when it fell into the wet mud.

"Where is he?"

Sonic came back at them and snatched the two weapons.

"How can he be that fast?"

"He's one of these…! Sayhutao will get us!"

"Help!"

Sonic smirked at the confused shouting. "Yes, I can see you all and you can't see me! And now I've got your weapons!"

"Is that your territory?", one of the turtles asked, visibly struggling to keep his voice calm.

His territory? Weird choice of words. But maybe it was a way to get them away from here. Sonic didn't like those guys, they looked into the darkness hiding the hedgehog that hostile that he didn't like them at all. But weird enough, they also seemed a bit scared, although Sonic had no idea of what they could be.

"Correct. Your trespassing is not wanted. Go home!", the hedgehog said as seriously as he could, stepping out of the shadow. He was regarding the motionless body on the ground worriedly. What if they had already killed him? Sonic looked up at the weird guys again and threw them a challenging look.

The four turtles discussed silently, but obviously not little alarmed, then the guy that seemed to be the leader spoke again. "We will follow your request. We only came to this territory to pursue that one. He had escaped from our dungeon. But we finished our task. He won't tell anyone our secrets. Now we'll go back to report the great Emperor." The turtle made a wink and his fellows followed him without a word or a gaze for the one on the ground or for Sonic. The hedgehog looked after them when the dim light of the torch faded into blackness.

Sure that they wouldn't come back, he switched on his own light and crouched down aside of the person they had beaten. Sonic gasped when he saw him closely for the first time. He was laying face-down in the mud, his wet fur clinging to his skin, showing dark markings of blood and dirt. Sonic could only guess that it had been red. From his head, long and thick quills fell over his shoulders. He was an echidna. And there was only one.

"Knuckles!", Sonic shouted. There came no answer.

Carefully the hedgehog grabbed Knuckles' shoulders and turned him around to his back. His chest wore as much signs of wounds as his back and his face with closed eyes was pale underneath a film of mud. Was he…

Sonic put one of his ears on his chest to listen for some sign of life. He found a very weak pulse and a shallow breathing. He was alive. Only barely, but he was. Looked like those freaks hadn't finished their task anyway. If it had contained -

"Knuckles! Knuckles, do you hear me?", Sonic tried once again, softly patting the echidna on the cheeks.

Knuckles' eyelids winced, then his eyes slowly opened a bare slit. The look of them almost hurt Sonic. "No, don't…. I don't know anything …. I only want home…..", the echidna mumbled, it was only a hardly audible whisper.

"It's okay, relax, it's me. It's Sonic. Sonic. I won't hurt you. And I promise nobody else will either," Sonic tried calming him, keeping his voice carefully low and as comforting as possible.

Knuckles looked up at him with a fogged-up gaze, then let out a small sigh and his eyes shut, his head dropping to the side.

"Knuckles!", Sonic shouted fearfully and hastily searched for his pulse again. He sighed in relief when he still found one, Knuckles had just passed out. If 'just' was an appropriate term right now.

"Oh man, what did they do to you, Knux?", Sonic mumbled when he cautiously scooped the echidna up, holding the flashlight with his teeth.

Sonic rushed back to the hangar. He had to tip the code with the flashlight in his mouth and failed five times until the door finally opened. Stepping in, Sonic spat out the small lamp and hit the switch for the lighting in the hangar with his left elbow.

What has happened to him?, Sonic thought. Knuckles is a tough guy, capturing him isn't easy. But these freaks somehow had and it looked very much like Knuckles had been through hell at their dungeon, as one of them had said he had escaped from there.

Wherever that was.

Who were those guys? And what did they want from Knuckles? Whatever they had done to him, it must have been horrible. Remembering Knuckles' words, that he didn't know anything, they must have been asking him questions.

Had they mistaken him for someone? More than unlikely. He was the only living echidna on Mobius and therefore not to be mistaken with anyone.

Had he maybe seen something not meant for his eyes, something dangerous for theses guys and they had to make sure how much he knew? And when they found out he didn't know any of their secrets, they had decided to kill him?

That was the most logical solution Sonic was able to come up with. It made sense, in a very odd way. What was sure was that Knuckles somehow had managed to flee. But they had pursued him and in this state he had had no chance to escape them in the end. How far had he managed to drag himself? It was impossible to tell. Judging from the way he looked, it seemed like he wouldn't even be able to walk ten meters, but Sonic had seen Knuckles fighting unharmed enemies when everything that was keeping the echidna on his feet was stubbornness. From their first encounter on, Knuckles had always been like that, even injured standing between Sonic and the Master Emerald, trying to protect it no matter what… And Sonic was sure he would do everything he did with just that same stamina. But…

Sonic still couldn't forget the expression in Knuckles' eyes just a minute ago. He had never seen so much pain and fear in them. Not Knuckles. Everybody was sometimes scared, but not like this. And Knuckles was one of the most courageous people Sonic knew. He was never careless, but he was brave. And Sonic found he didn't really want to think too hard about what it might have taken to bring someone as proud as Knuckles into pleading for mercy.

The hedgehog shivered. The simple imagination was giving him the creeps.


	3. Improvements

**Improvements**

Knuckles' eyelids winced. Sonic smiled down on him, glad that he was finally awake. But the hedgehog didn't want to talk too much, so he settled for something short. "Hi."

"Sonic?" The echidna looked up at him with obvious irritation. "… Not a dream…", he mumbled quietly.

"No, not a dream. I'm very much real." Sonic grinned. "Do you want something to drink?"

Knuckles nodded. He reached for the bottle when Sonic held it out at him. Holding the bottle up to his lips clearly hurt him, but Sonic let him his will to drink on his own.

"Do you want me to get you something to eat?", the hedgehog asked. "You must be half starved."

Knuckles hesitated. "I don't know. I feel kinda sick."

Sonic nodded understandingly. "I'll get some dry bread, okay?"

The echidna nodded, not entirely convinced, but too weak to start an argument with Sonic.

Sonic brought him a piece of the bread. Knuckles chewed cautiously on the food. Sonic just sat and waited for him to finish, he didn't want to disturb him with talking now. When Knuckles had swallowed the bread, the hedgehog spoke again. "Want some more?"

Knuckles shook his head.

Sonic shrugged. "Okay. Can you sit a bit longer? I need to change your bandages."

"I think I can. Just go ahead," Knuckles nodded. It looked like he didn't really care what was going on and what Sonic did to him.

The hedgehog peeled up the soiled tapes. "You mind to tell me what happened to you?", Sonic asked. There was a moment of silence and the hedgehog continued. "If you prefer not to talk about it, that's okay. It's just that I've been sitting racking my brains for quite a while here. Who were those guys?"

Knuckles winced at the touch of Sonic's fingers, but nodded. His deep voice was a bit shaky when he answered the hedgehog. "They came in the middle of the night. I don't know why and what they wanted from me. I've never seen any of them before. They shot me with a small arrow. It must have contained some kind of sedating poison, the next thing I know is that I woke up in a dark and dirty room with my hands and feet tied." He paused for a moment. "I don't know how long I've been in there. They didn't give me food. Instead, they came and asked questions. I don't remember what they asked. I didn't know anything they wanted to know. But they didn't believe me. They…They … hurt me to bring me into telling things I couldn't tell and….." Knuckles swallowed hard.

Sonic finished wrapping a fresh tape around Knuckles' chest and back and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing softly. He didn't know what to say to this.

He would get them for hurting one of his best friends like that. He would get them. Sonic gritted his teeth. He would… would….

What exactly would he do to them if he got them? Kill them? Sonic had never done anything like revenge on a person before. It wasn't his style. And now he found that he didn't have the slightest idea what he would do. Could he really, by design, hurt anybody? Then again, who? He didn't even know for sure who to hold responsible for that. The 'Emperor', whoever that was?

And if he took revenge for Knuckles, was he really better than their enemies? Sonic shook his head. No. He couldn't just go out and kill them. He would do something, but he didn't know what.

* * *

"Can we help you somehow?"

Tails turned around towards the voice behind him. "No thanks. I'm doing good on my own."

"How are your repairs doing?"

"Okay I guess. There are some charred circuits and some of my instruments are only junk any longer, but the most important stuff should be fine." Tails turned his screwdriver around in his hands. "Oh, you could do something for me. Do you have some of the golden rings around? I use them as the power source for the Tornado."

"We should have some." The rabbit turned and left the hangar again.

Tails looked over to the damaged door. Yesterday they had provisorily repaired the hangar portal with a few planks nailed to the hole. It did look weird, but kept the storms out.

The young fox turned back to his plane, his head once again disappearing into the opened engine bay. He grimaced at the smell of burned wires and reached for a small transmitter unit, pulling it loose with a thump. Tails spun it around, then dropped it to the floor where it could join some other pieces of his plane's interior. "Damn," Tails cursed. "I guess half of the Tornado is junk now. Stupid, stupid, stupid lightening!"

He connected some of the still intact wires, hoping that wouldn't lead to another short. He crawled out of the plane again just in time to see the yellow rabbit return. "Here, these enough for ya?"

Tails nodded and took the rings, putting them into the power unit. He spun his tails and lifted himself up into the cockpit. The fox reached for the button and smirked. "Wish me luck," he mumbled and pressed it.

The small lights of the Tornado's instruments blinked briefly, the engines let out a stuttering sound, the propeller started a short wincing spinning, then small sparks danced over the dashboards and everything went out again. "Urgh." Tails winced backwards and brushed the fur of his twin tails back down.

"This was not good, was it?", the question of his companion came from aside of the plane.

"No," Tails groaned, "this was not good. Now I can start over."

* * *

When Knuckles slowly awoke from a deep sleep, he noticed for the first time the softness of the mattress and pillows he lay on and the warmth of the blanket on top of him. It took him a moment to remember what had happened.

Knuckles wriggled a tiny bit to make himself more comfortable and for a moment just enjoyed the soft sensation of the bed he was resting on. It felt GREAT. He had almost forgotten how nice a soft place to lie on could be. The echidna just lay and breathed, not wanting to do anything beyond simply exist and enjoy this existing.

It was by now that he finally realized that he was alive, that he had made it. Knuckles had no idea where he was, but he wasn't complaining about that. He was warm and comfortable and whatever that place was, it was safe, and knowing that overwhelmed him with relief so huge that it almost stunned him. The feeling dulled his pains and made him feel incredibly light all of a sudden. He had really made it. A smile crossed Knuckles' face.

The echidna opened his eyes to take a look around. He lifted his head out of the pillow and smirked again, this time at what he saw. At the bedside a chair was standing on which Sonic was sitting, no, had been sitting. Now the blue hedgehog was lying half on the chair, half tilted against the wall at his side. Sonic's eyes were closed and his chest falling and rising regularly. "Hey, Sonic. Wake up!"

Sonic was upright lightening-fast, not the least bit sleepy. "I'm not sleeping!"

"Ah, you're not? Then there was another blue hedgehog just here that teleported out of here and was replaced by you," Knuckles smiled as he teased the hedgehog.

It was the first time Sonic saw a smile on his face since he was here. "Feeling better? You do look a little better."

Knuckles nodded. "I feel much better. Sure, I hurt almost everywhere and it's even straining lifting my head, but I still feel better. I don't really know why."

Sonic smiled. "Your eyes look alive again. The last days you always had this empty gaze somehow. Do you need something?"

Knuckles smiled back. "Okay, who _are _you and what have you done to the spiky idiot I used to know?"

Sonic pulled an insulted face. "Hey, I've never been _that_ mean to you."

The echidna grinned. "Okay, you haven't. And if I really arrived at the one time per year you're having your polite day, you could hand me that bottle over there. I'm dying of thirst."

"It will be a pleasure," Sonic answered in an exaggeratedly polite tone, turned and reached for the bottle, passing it to Knuckles.

The echidna grabbed it, gulping down the water that hastily that he coughed on it. Not able to cough and hold the bottle in the same time, he splashed half of the content into his face. "Damn…", he cursed.

Sonic took the bottle from his grip and couldn't help it but grin. "You're supposed to drink that stuff, not use it for a shower."

Knuckles looked up at him from out of the pillows, trying to wipe the water from his face and managing only half. "Very funny, Sonic." He looked grouchy for a few more seconds, then a grin spread over his face. "Looks like I'm a little clumsy."

Sonic smirked. "I guess nobody can blame you." The hedgehog chuckled. "But it sure looked kinda funny."

Knuckles looked up at him and laughed, then grimaced when it clearly provoked some pain from his cracked rips and the cuts and bruises all over, but still joked. "Maybe I could use a bath…"

"I don't think that this is a good idea." Sonic shrugged. "And you already gave yourself one."

Knuckles laughed again and Sonic smiled, relieved that he was regaining some sense of humor.

"But Sonic," the echidna said when he was finished giggling.

"What?"

"Now the stupid blanket is all wet and I'm too."

Sonic smirked. "I'll get a towel and another blanket. Don't want you to snatch a cold here." He stood up.

"Sonic?", Knuckles shouted after him when the hedgehog was already halfway through the door.

"Yeah? Now what?", Sonic turned back to him.

Knuckles glanced up at him pleadingly. "Can I get the bottle back?"

Sonic grinned. "Didn't you get enough of the water?"

Knuckles just shook his head.

"That's your fault. Nobody told you to splash it all over yourself instead of drinking it." Sonic shrugged, looking seriously at Knuckles. The echidna's gaze became slightly desperate. "But I'm not that cruel," the hedgehog gave in and smiled, giving the water back to Knuckles' eager hands. "I almost forgot that I'm having my nice day today."

"Don't play such tricks on me," Knuckles complained, then stopped talking, busily gulping down the rest of the bottle.

Sonic shook his head at him. "Be careful. If you drink too fast, you'll get sick." Without waiting for an answer, Sonic left the room. When he returned with a towel and a thick woolen blanket from the living room, Knuckles was about to drink the last sips. "You don't listen, do you?"

The echidna looked up at him innocently. "I was thirsty."

"Your business." Sonic shrugged his shoulders. Then he handed Knuckles the dry covers. "You're okay like that?"

"Almost."

Sonic frowned, looking puzzled at Knuckles.

"I'm getting curious. Where are we, Sonic?"

"You don't know?", the hedgehog wondered, "But you've been here for three days already."

"That long? I'm afraid I don't remember much."

"No big surprise though. You've been out the most of the time."

Knuckles just nodded. "But you didn't answer my question, hedgehog. Should I know the place?"

Sonic gave him a nod. "You've been here before a few times."

"I didn't really come to see it so far. Being caught flat on your back isn't the best position for sight seeing. And the one time I've been sitting it made me to dizzy to see clearly."

"This is Tails' bedroom. We're at his workshop in the Mystic Ruins," Sonic explained.

Knuckles lifted his head and tried snatching a look around. Finding that it didn't really work, he flopped back. "Come to talk of him, if this is Tails' home, where is he?"

Sonic shrugged. "Out. He went on a trip with the Tornado to the North Pole. Invented something new he wanted to test out there. He'll be back in a few days."

"Ah." Knuckles nodded, curiosity satisfied for now. He was silent for a little while, then he looked up at the hedgehog again. "Sonic?"

"What's the matter?"

"I guess I'm hungry."

Sonic grinned, in the same time raising an eyebrow. "You guess?"

Knuckles shrugged slightly. "I haven't been really eating for a while. I think I forgot how that feels."

Sonic nodded understandingly. "You really ought to have something. I think I saw some packet soups in the kitchen. I'll try me best not burning them."

Knuckles grinned. "You burn everything you cook. But right now, I don't care."

Sonic smiled down on him. "If you can stay on your own for a while, I'll make some soup for ya."

Knuckles nodded vigorously. "I'm fine here."

Sonic gave him a nod when he left for the kitchen. "Okay. Don't run away."

* * *

Tails put his pliers down and hopped into the cockpit, praying that it would work this time. He was coming to hate the north pole, it was cold, the weather was a disaster and lightenings stroke his poor plane and forced him to do crash landings. It had been the first crash Tails had done in a couple of years, and the last ones had always been caused by Robotnik shooting at him.

But it was a new experience. He had gone on that trip to see how the Tornado could deal with extreme weather conditions and he had found out now that it could handle storms and snow and freezing cold alright, but that it wasn't lightening-proof. Tails grinned wearily. He would need to invent something against that.

The fox took a deep breath and tried to switch on the engines again. Unconsciously he braced himself for another burst of sparks on his instruments and another system failure, but the propeller started spinning with a pleasingly normal whirling noise and all the small lights on his dashboard flickered back into life. "Whooo!", Tails cheered.

His blue eyes cast over the controls. He had lost the automatic target control for his weapon systems, a lot of the sensors, the satellite communication and the positioning, but the important systems were working. Tails grinned satisfied. He could get outta here now. Finally.

* * *

The instructions on the packet said the soup needed ten minutes.

Sonic burned it in seven and it was nearly twenty minutes after he had left Knuckles when he finally mastered a meal that looked, smelled and tasted eatable.

Proud of his success, Sonic took a plate and a spoon for Knuckles and returned to the bedroom. He shook his head when he entered. Knuckles' calm and regular breathing was monitoring deep sleep.

"Great Knux. I nearly burn the house down to get you some warm food and you fall asleep."

Sonic held the bowl with the steaming soup under his nose. No reaction. The hedgehog poked his arm and Knuckles stirred, sighing sleepily, but then he sniffed. His eyelids fluttered and blinked open. "Wha…?"

Sonic smiled at his sleepy look. "I got some food for ya. Do you want it now or do you wanna wait and go back to sleep?"

"Food?" Knuckles sniffed again and his stomach gave a loud growl.

Sonic snickered. "Right, food. But you gotta sit up to eat it."

"Huh?"

"Okay, first you need to wake up completely." Sonic grinned.

Knuckles was visibly fighting to get his eyes fully open. "I'm wide awake," he stated and yawned promptly.

"Sure you are. I bet if I leave you alone for just one minute, you'll be in sweet dreams again." Sonic smiled when Knuckles rubbed his eyes. "Okay, let's see how awake you are. What color is your big shiny rock?"

Knuckles grimaced. "If you want to test how far I'm conscious, you should think of more intelligent questions, hedgehog. Firstly, it is not a 'shiny big rock', it's the sacred Master Emerald. And secondly, it's green. Happy? Now will you finally give me my food?"

Sonic laughed. "Okay, that was enough of an answer to convince me." He still grinned when he handed him the bowl of soup. "Here you are. Eat it slowly. We don't want to expect too much of your stomach."

Knuckles nodded, digging the spoon into the soup and testing it. He brightened. "That is really the tastiest stuff I ever had. And I always thought of you as a miserable cook." Knuckles smiled and took another mouthful.

Sonic sat on the chair and watched him eating, not mentioning that this was the second try to make eatable soup and that it wasn't really anything special or extremely good. To be honest, Sonic had tried it himself. It had a slightly burned aftertaste that must have been left of his failed first cooking attempt in the pot. Then Sonic had put far too much salt in it, but it lacked the other spices. In fact, it was quite a crappy soup and certainly far away from worth being called delicious. The only good things you could say about it were that it had a really unique taste and that Sonic had given his best making it.

But Knuckles wasn't anything like objective on evaluating food at the very moment. So Sonic didn't say a word about the stupid soup, he didn't want to spoil Knuckles' pleasure.

A few minutes later Sonic took an empty bowl from Knuckles. Now with his stomach filled, he looked satisfied, but tired. Sonic grinned. "Go back to sleep. You need it."

"Hmmm," Knuckles muttered closing his eyes. Sonic was already on his way out when the echidna called after him. "Sonic?"

"What?"

"Will you do me a favor? Not now, later?" Knuckles glared at the returning hedgehog, peering out of the thick pillow.

Sonic shrugged. "Sure. What favor?"

"I met this old man and he begged me into finding something for him," Knuckles mumbled, eyes half falling close against his will. "He said I should bring it to a safe place and I promised I'll find it and do this for him. Will you help me, Sonic?"

"Of course." Sonic grinned, seeing how Knuckles strained his eyelids to remain open.

"He told me a puzzle," the echidna continued. Then he started repeating the words. "In black on green, Sayhutao's heart beat is blowing." Knuckles paused a moment, thinking. "Fire meets rock and the path will open to the place of power. And it's important that ten and ten change to six and nine. That's what he said. – Got it?"

Sonic nodded, struggling to keep the confusion off his face and answer lightly. "I'll see what I can find out. If you go to sleep now."

"You'll really try?"

The hedgehog nodded. "Sure." In fact, all Sonic wanted was getting Knuckles to sleep. He didn't say that this puzzle sounded like huge nonsense and honestly Sonic wasn't quite sure how far he could take anything Knuckles said serious. The echidna was hurt, exhausted, out-stressed and right now muzzy with tiredness. Maybe he was just talking crap. Not showing any of these thoughts, Sonic smiled down on him. "I'll see what I can find out."

Knuckles nodded satisfied, eyes finally falling all the way close.

"Sleep tight Knux," Sonic said quietly. Knuckles replied with a sleepy sigh and Sonic cautiously sneaked out of the room. The blue hedgehog walked down the stairs to the workshop. He tried to recall what Knuckles had said. Sonic still wasn't sure if this was just some half asleep nonsense or if Knuckles had really meant it, but he had told him he would try to find out something and so he would.

Even if it seemed a waste of time. To be honest, Sonic had nothing else to do anyway.

* * *

**_A little note from the creator of this nonsense of a fanfic:_**

_Think this is stupid? Found some small hints at what's going on?_

_There's much more to be revealed (and also to be not revealed-hehe) later, two more chaps to go and we'll finally reach some part with REAL action stuff... Next one will be one contributing to the second genre... But no more spoiling here...  
_

_Anyway, this is going to be the last update for at least three weeks. I'm going on a holiday and, as some of you may know, mountain summits and tents have catastrophic internet connections. And I will have other things to do.  
So while you read this, I'm somewhat likely to be climbing up some kind of rock, asking myself why in the world I'm doing this, or taking a fun run in a forest, or just sitting on one of the hopefully to be reached summits enjoying the scenery._

_Although I don't die if not, I'd of course be happy to come home and find one or the other review... ;-) You'll have to wait for an answer until I'm back of course...  
_

_Thanks for reading this far, hoping to see ya later,  
Speedy_

_(7th July 2009)_


	4. Surprise

_Here I am again, although not completely with what I had planned to stand here a few weeks ago. The attempt to write a little, humorous intermezzo before finally getting to the real action grew before I knew it to more than five thousand words... That about being long winded and getting carried away..._

_Hope you'll enjoy anyway ,-)_

_Now all of you who read this silly note: Quit it and read the silly story! :-)  
_

* * *

**

* * *

Surprise**

Sonic shut his eyes for a moment, thinking, then looked at the piece of paper he had scribbled Knuckles' puzzle on. The hedgehog shook his head. This was useless. It didn't make any sense.

Okay, the first line was something with colors, whatever one should make of this. In the second line, it really started getting impossible to find a meaning. Sajuto.. or.. sayhudo.. or something like this, Sonic wasn't sure about that word and pointed it with a question mark. Maybe it was a word of echidna language. Sonic didn't speak Knuckles' mother tongue. It could be a name, judging from the rest of this line.

Rest that didn't make any sense either. A heart beat that blows? A beat beats, doesn't it? And then this with the numbers. It could maybe be a code or a date or…or… Sonic ran out of ideas. And fire and rock?

Sonic sighed. This really was a waste of time. He was staring at this paper for half an hour now and still was as clueless as in the beginning. "Knux, your poem is damn crap." Sonic hopped out of his hammock, it didn't look like if he could understand any of this.

Maybe my soup was hallucinogenic and Knuckles was… Sonic grinned. Unlikely. And delirious people sure could talk nonsense, but something like that…. It seemed too complex to be a product of a fogged-up mind or muzzy imagination.

* * *

Tails sat up in his seat, blinking that last remaining sleepiness out of his eyes. After a short, but warm goodbye for the scientists in the camp, Tails had started his flight home yesterday evening, after the snow storms had finally died out. He had had to promise to come back for a visit some time later.

After he'd left the north pole behind, Tails had settled for taking a nap and letting the autopilot take care of the flying, somehow glad that it belonged to the parts of the Tornado's systems that were still working.

Now it was morning and the two tailed fox leaned out of his plane to take a look down. The first, almost hesitant beams of light the sun sent over the horizon showed him the picture of the early morning Mystic Ruins, hints of mist occupying the valleys between the small hills, painting a shimmer of golden glow between the trees of the forest in the orange light.

Tails switched off the autopilot and lowered the plane when he spotted his house. The Tornado touched down softly on the meadow in front of it and rolled towards the hangar. A quickly pressed button on a small remote opened the hangar portal for Tails and he slowly drove inside.

After he had stopped and turned off the engines, Tails hopped down to the floor, glad to stand somewhere the ground wasn't covered with snow up to his belly. He looked over at the stairway and grinned when he spotted a very tired looking blue hedgehog slowly walking them down. ""Hey, morning Sonic!"

"Mornin', Tails," Sonic smiled, but then lifted his hand to hide a yawn. "How was your trip?"

"Oh, could have been better. A lightening hit the Tornado and caused big damage. I crashed."

Sonic quirked an eye ridge as he approached, looking Tails up and down. "You okay?"

Tails nodded quickly. "I'm fine. The Tornado could be better though." He glanced at the hedgehog. "What about you? You look as if you hadn't really slept for nights. Trouble?"

Sonic nodded and ran a hand through his quills. "You can really call it that." He pointed at the stairs. "Knuckles is sleeping in your bedroom. He's hurt."

"What? How did he get here? What happened?" Tails' eyes went wide open. "And what-"

"Hey, hey, hey, slow down, will ya?" Sonic grinned. "I don't know a lot, but I'll tell you, 'kay? Maybe you can help me out a bit."

* * *

Faint sounds from behind drew his attention and Sonic lifted his head and half turned around. He spotted Tails casually sitting on top of a working desk and sat up himself, jumped off the sofa and walked over to the fox. Having Tails around, Sonic had decided to catch up on some sleep.

Hearing his footsteps, Tails turned around to him and grinned. "Hi Sonic. Well-rested now?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, I guess I needed that."

"Knuckles said you're lazy."

"Ah, _I'm_ lazy? Lookwho's talking…" Sonic smiled. "How is he doin'?"

"I think he's more or less okay giving the circumstances. We had some pancakes for breakfast and talked a while about this and that. He was surprised that I'm back already and I had to tell him about my trip. I think he was bored." Tails smiled. "But he got tired and went back to sleep some time later. I guess he's still exhausted." Tails shrugged.

Sonic nodded. "No surprise that he is. But I guess sleeping is fine for him. He was better every time. As if one could sleep off something like that."

The fox tilted his head. "Maybe you can. I'm no expert on that."

"I think it depends on the person." Sonic shrugged at his guess.

Tails looked at his adoptive brother. "Maybe we should do something special for him, you know, something fun. To make him get better."

"Great. I won't draw him a picture of the Master Emerald so he can guard it while he's here. And getting this heavy thing of a stone down here is out of question too." Sonic smirked sarcastically. "And I guess he'd try killing the two of us if we'd suggest something like this."

"Ohh, Soniiiic, not like that," Tails groaned. "I really meant it."

"Fine. Any ideas what could be fun for him?"

A sudden grin spread over Tails' face. "Yup."

"What's your plan?" Sonic frowned doubtfully as Tails told him his idea. "You sure?"

The fox nodded. "Everybody likes. And the date is almost great."

Sonic rubbed his chin. "Okay little bro, your idea."

* * *

"Knux? You awake?", Sonic asked through the half opened door.

"Yes."

Only one word as an answer. Sure, Knuckles had never been a talkative person and it was one of the simple yes-or-no-questions, but his expression was not only little interested. He was looking slightly annoyed. No, not only slightly.

Sonic frowned as he stepped into the bedroom. "You okay?"

"No." Knuckles shook his head, forcing Sonic's frown to deepen a few inches.

"What's wrong?"

"All of this. I'm getting damn sick of staring at this damn stupid ceiling all day long. I don't understand those silly crossword puzzles Tails gave to me, they always ask for things I have never heard of." Knuckles sighed deeply. "I don't even know what I could think of somehow. I can't even tell you how much I wish I could get out and go for a walk or do something… something less…less…stupid. I don't know how I feel Sonic, I am…" The red echidna ran out of words for his state.

Sonic's concerned expression had changed to a grin. "I know how you feel."

Knuckles looked up at him. "Really? Am I going insane or something?"

Sonic grinned even broader. "There is a very simple word for this. You are **bored**. Bored out of your skull."

Knuckles stared at him for a moment with a mixture of relief that he wasn't going nuts and astonishment about this. Then he finally smiled slightly. "So, this is how you always feel? Like that?"

Sonic smirked. "Basically, yes. Not always that bad, but, yes. Don't tell me you've never been bored before."

Knuckles shook his head. "No. Unlike you, I have a task. I usually have things to do. And if not, I can just look at the clouds or go for a walk to the edge of Angel Island to look down or start some gliding practice."

"This is it about boredom, you only get it if you have nothing to do," Sonic said," If you have to sit somewhere and wait for example."

"So since I'm talking to the expert: What do I do against this?"

Sonic shrugged. "Dunno. I think it is a good sign that you are bored."

The echidna frowned. "What is _good_ about that?"

"It tells me you are getting better."

"Ah." Knuckles lifted an eyebrow. "Great, hedgehog. You're not really helpful. Letting me being bored and just standing there. Sadistic," he muttered then, gazing up at Sonic. "And stop grinning that stupid grin."

Sonic was about to deliver some sort of sarcastic comment, but was interrupted when Tails entered the room. "Ah, now you don't need to bore your brains out, Tails planned an attack on you and tracked me right into it."

"Sonic, it will be fun...", Tails said almost sounding excusing.

"Attack? What are you planning to do to me?" Knuckles finally sat up and looked at Sonic. "Just because I can't run away right now you can't-"

"You could never run from me, Knux. I'm faster. F-a-s-t-e-r. Just saying in case you forgot or something," the blue hedgehog gave back.

Knuckles was speechless for just a second before he could start again. "And I won't eat any of your junk food, hedgehog. And I'm not telling you my life story just because you two think fairytales cold be nice now." He stopped when Sonic didn't reply and looked to Tails, noticing the rope with red and green balloons the fox had dragged in and now hung up on the ceiling, lifting himself up by his two spinning tails. "Okay, what is that? Have you just discovered that this room needs decoration or what?"

Tails giggled as he touched back down. "I think I'll go get it, huh, Sonic?"

The hedgehog nodded and Tails left the room.

Knuckles stared after him, now beginning to feel suddenly really confused. Helpless, he turned to Sonic. "Okay, what is that here?"

Sonic smiled. "Tails' idea. Let's just say we are throwing a very small, private party."

Knuckles frowned, no clue what to make of this. "Party? What do you celebrate?"

"Your birthday," Tails answered instead of Sonic from the doorway. He was carrying a big cake with candles on it and now put it down on the bed aside of Knuckles.

"My ….." the echidna looked from the cake to Tails, to Sonic and back.

The hedgehog snickered, visibly struggling not to break into laughter. Knuckles considered his face wasn't the most intelligent one right now. "Correct, your birthday." Sonic's face was once again crossed by this terribly annoying, silly grin of his.

"Err… ", Knuckles found himself mumbling, still not able to keep the dumbfounded look off his features. He didn't know what to make of this. Tails had once asked him when his birthday was, but Knuckles had considered that a random question and been already surprised that Tails was interested in that and had not expected that the little fox would remember it. The question itself had already confused him, there was no reason why one day in the year was different from the others. On the Floating Island, there were only two sorts of days: good days, what meant those that were calm and free of interlopers and dangers to the Master Emerald, and bad days that contained such threats.

"I have to admit that it is a little belated party," the two tailed fox continued, not seeming to notice Knuckles' irritation. "By one month to be accurate. But we thought that isn't important."

One month. To be honest, Knuckles had no clue what date it was, usually he kept rough trace of the seasons automatically by observing the nature on Angel Island, the last weeks had somewhat been stuffed with other things. The echidna knew it had to be early spring now, but... Tails didn't only know the concrete date, he also knew that it was one month after Knuckles' birthday, what meant he had really memorized that. What was downright unexpected.

Knuckles snapped out of his thoughts when Sonic waved a hand in front of his face. "Hello? Mobius to echidna? Still there? Knux?"

"I… eh…. Where should I have gone, hedgehog?", the echidna grumbled, then stopped and looked between his two friends, suddenly getting the idea that they were not trying to offend him and that he maybe should be at least a little nice. His gaze stopped at the cake. They had baked a cake for him. He hadn't asked for one, would have never gotten the idea to ask. The fact that the others were paying some thought on doing something just for him was to equal parts unexpected and therefore extremely confusing, and something that made him feel … how was he feeling about this anyway? "Eh... thanks?"

Sonic and Tails exchanged a glance as he finally said something. "I would say the surprise turned out great," the hedgehog remarked.

Tails giggled. "Yeah, we should take a photo. He's looking funny."

Sonic laughed shortly, then looked at Knuckles, his tone turning exaggeratedly polite. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's just …. I never …"

"Really? No party?" Tails shook his head and turned to Sonic. "Then it's no surprise that he doesn't know what to do."

Knuckles helplessly looked at the little fox. This was getting more confusing with every second. "I'm supposed to _do_ something? … What?"

Instead of Tails, Sonic answered, putting on a supposed-to-be-smart face, but succeeding only half due to the grin plastered to his lips. "How about blowing out the candles?"

"And you have to blow them out all at once and make a wish!", Tails explained, his face showing that this was something very important.

Knuckles regarded the cake, taking his first real look at it. Someone had written 'Happy birthday Knuckles' on top of it and around the lettering a circle of colorful candles had been placed. Seventeen candles as the echidna finally realized. "Why'd you do...", he mumbled, realizing that he'd thought aloud only when he got an answer.

"This is what you do for a friend, you throw a party for him on his birthday," Tails explained him.

Tails' reply sounded so much like a commonly known thing that Knuckles felt rather foolish now. "You do…?"

Sonic pointed at the cake, with a smiled trying to help the echidna out a bit. "Now will you finally blow out your candles? Before the cake bursts into flames?"

"Eh… sure." Knuckles leaned over his cake, but hesitated and looked up at Tails again, trying to be sure that he did everything correct. Tails had gone through some sort of work for him and Knuckles supposed it would be impolite and dishonorable not to behave correctly. "And all at once, right?"

The fox gave him a thumbs-up. "You got it."

Knuckles took a deep breath and blew out the little flames.

"Did you make a wish?", Tails asked immediately, sounding curious.

The red echidna sat back upright. "Of course. Do you want me to tell you?"

Tails shook his head vigorously. "No way! You can't tell anybody, otherwise it won't become true."

"Ah." Knuckles nodded, trying to give his face an understanding look. The truth was, he barely understood enough to get to the conclusion that this thing with the candles seemed to be some serious ritual. At least Tails was taking it serious, Knuckles wasn't quite sure if Sonic was, the hedgehog was having such a small look in his eyes, maybe kids like Tails took that more serious than other people... Dropping the topic for now, the echidna looked between his friends, half hoping to be done with whatever attack they had planned on him, half sure that this couldn't have been all. "Okay, what do I do now?"

Sonic tilted his head. "We can eat the cake of course. That's what you normally do with cakes."

Knuckles nodded. The first half serious, clear statement he heard since Tails had come in with his new decoration. "Sounds sensible."

"Or we could let him open the presents," Tails added to Sonic's words.

Knuckles' eyes widened, now even more perplex again. "Presents? …"

Sonic shrugged and shook his head. "What's a birthday without presents? "

"Really, Knuckles," Tails added, "we've known you for years now and we never gave you a party or a birthday present. Sonic does that for me every year and I do it every year for him."

"Every year?", the echidna found himself echoing.

Sonic nodded. "Sure. Every year again. In fact, Tails is always happy about the burned cakes he gets from me."

"Because even as he has absolutely no baking skills, Sonic tries every year again," Tails smiled, regarding Knuckles as if he was talking to a person being mentally slow. "He tries for me. Because he likes me. And because of that his cakes are good even though they are all black."

"Okay, I think I got it." Knuckles nodded, then smiled at the others, in lack of anything he could say.

Sonic shrugged. "It's okay if you don't know. If this really is the first birthday party ever friends give for you…."

Knuckles smiled, a little less hesitantly. "I still don't know what to do."

Tails grinned. "That's fine."

"Now what? Do we kill the cake first or do we let him open the presents?" Sonic tilted his head thoughtfully. "What do you say Tails?"

"Err.. I would always prefer opening the presents if it was my birthday."

Knuckles watched their conversation, somehow still having problems grasping what was going on. His contacts with the surface people, mostly then with Sonic and Tails, was limited on short time visits, or trips, usually to stop Robotnik, so that his knowledge and especially his experience with such customs, as this birthday party thing seemed to be, was just as limited. But for some reason he couldn't explain, he started to get strangely curious about what these presents might be … weird… He would have never thought that he –

"What do you say, Knux?", Sonic interrupted Knuckles' train of thoughts.

"What?"

Sonic turned to Tails. "He is still surprised." Tails giggled and Sonic turned back to Knuckles. "I was asking if you want the cake first or the presents."

"I can … choose?"

Sonic smirked. "That's your birthday. Yes, I'm asking _you_."

"Okay…" The echidna hesitated. If he chose the presents, the others would find out how curious he was, but if he chose the cake he would have to wait…. Man, that was tough. "I guess I …" He hesitated again. "Okay, let me open the presents first."

Sonic snickered. "You needed surprisingly long for that if you don't mind me saying so." He stood up. "Okay, I'll get them."

Knuckles looked after him when he left the room, then turned to Tails. "I'm behaving stupid, right?"

The fox shrugged. "Not too stupid I would say. As long as you're having fun, that's okay I guess."

Knuckles was about to answer in spite of being completely in the dark if he _was _actually having fun, but Sonic returned, carrying an armful of colorful boxes of different sizes. The hedgehog tossed them on the bed, half covering Knuckles with them.

The echidna looked down on the presents. "What now?"

Sonic grinned sheepishly. "Open them, Silly."

"Which one?"

Sonic shrugged.

Tails smiled at Knuckles. "Since they are all yours, you can open each one you like."

"Oh..Okay…" The echidna regarded the boxes, then picked one with a yellow band around it. He untied it and cautiously removed the paper around it. But it ripped anyway. Knuckles held it up. "What do I do with that?"

"Give it to me," Tails said and took the paper.

Knuckles turned his attention back to the box on his laps. He opened it and looked inside. It contained something brightly white. Curiously Knuckles reached in. It was tissue. Pulling it out, Knuckles regarded it, finding out that it was a pair of gloves. The material they consisted of was stretchy and soft. He turned one of them around in his hands. The small holes for his spikes were strengthened and on the palm and the fingers the tissue was rough to allow a good grip. Knuckles looked up at Sonic and Tails. "Can I try them on?"

Sonic grinned. "Go ahead. They're yours. And they are two sizes too big for any of us anyway."

Knuckles pulled the gloves over his hands, ignoring Sonic's comment. They felt soft and the stretchy tissue was like a second layer of skin. Knuckles turned his hands around, looking them all over, then made a fist and did the same again. This felt good.

"Like them?", Sonic asked finally.

Knuckles looked back up. He smiled. "They're great. How did you get these?"

"We let them make in the next city," Tails explained him. "I took your old along to know your size."

"They are of the same material like ours," Sonic added. "We got that idea because your old have several holes and are too dirty to get clean even after ten times riding the washing machine."

Knuckles was still busily regarding his hands, clenching and unclenching them again and again fascinatedly. "Don't you wanna know what is in the other presents?", Tails asked him.

"Err… forgot about that." Knuckles smiled hastily and took a second box, the biggest one there was, wrapping off the paper and giving it to Tails again. Then he reached in and pulled something out, turning it around a few times. "This is a rucksack, right?"

"Hmm," Tails nodded. "Was my idea. I thought when you go treasure hunting or on another trip, you can take some stuff you want along. And with a rucksack you have your hands free for gliding or climbing."

"That's a good idea." Knuckles nodded at the fox, starting to feel slightly at ease here. "Where do I put it now?"

"On the floor?", Sonic asked.

Knuckles nodded and handed it to him, then took another colorful box, unearthing a black cubic thing in it. He turned it around, regarded it from each side, then looked at the others. "Okay, help me guys. What is that?"

"Open it," Tails suggested.

"Open it? How?" Knuckles regarded the what-ever-he-had-just-got, turning it around in his hands again. Finally he discovered a small kind of switch and tried pressing it, but nothing happened. Then he pushed it to the left slightly, it moved easily and then a half of the thing jumped open. Completely caught by surprise, Knuckles winced backwards.

Sonic aside of him broke into laughter on his chair and it needed a few moments until the hedgehog got himself enough under control to speak. "Geez, Tails, that thing can be used to scare people!"

Gathering his wits again, Knuckles looked at the black thing. Now opened, it showed a small kind of screen and some buttons. "Err… Fine. So, what is that? Tails? I am right if I think that you built that? So you can tell me what it does?"

Tails nodded. "Sure. It is a communicator. A bit like the one I have in the Tornado. You can use it to talk to us when you are at home on Angel Island. I thought that if you always are there and want to talk to somebody, you always have to go down or wait until we come up by chance."

Knuckles smirked. "I see. That could come in handy. So if I feel like I need to burn some energy and aggressions, I could call and Sonic can come up and we can have a fight."

The hedgehog grinned. "Like that, yes. That was the basic idea."

"Cool Tails." Knuckles closed the box again and passed it to Sonic, who put it into the rucksack.

The echidna picked up the left present. Now really starting to enjoy that weird 'being surprised' thing, he shook it before opening it, trying to guess what it might be by the sounds the shaking made.

Sonic smiled at him. "Hey," the blue hedgehog said, turning to Tails, "he's catching up."

Tails giggled.

Knuckles grimaced. "Maybe I'm getting used to this." He regarded the small box he was holding. "But this isn't helpful. It refuses making any helpful sounds."

Now Tails laughed.

"So, what do we guess of this?", Sonic smirked, tilting his head.

Knuckles frowned. "It is something solid or soft. Or fills the box completely, so that it can't make noises when it hits it." The echidna focused back on his box, trying the shaking test again. It remained silent. "This is stupid. I thought it was a good idea, but it isn't working."

Tails shrugged. "You got it too late. It would have worked with the first presents."

"I guess I'm too slow with learning about weird traditions," Knuckles replied dryly.

Tails smiled, leaning over at Sonic, whispering something into his ear.

Knuckles looked from one to the other. "What are you two whispering there?"

Both shook their heads. "Can't tell ya, buddy. That would spoil the surprise," Sonic told him, grinning in a way that showed Knuckles clearly that blue idiot was enjoying this.

"Yeah, find out yourself," Tails nodded.

Deciding to ignore the two rather than throw something at them, Knuckles started opening the small box. It really was filled completely. With a book of some sort. Curiously Knuckles lifted it out of the box. A book with jokes. The echidna grinned. "That was your idea, right?" He looked at Sonic.

"Is that easy to guess?" Sonic rubbed the back of his spiky head.

"Yes. You're the one who's always out for fun.".

Sonic lifted his hands up. "Hey, what's the problem with fun?"

Knuckles grinned. "Nothing. I think I'm going to read it when the weather is terrible and I sit in a cave and have nothing to do. " He passed the book to the hedgehog who once again put it into the rucksack. After a moment of silence, he spoke again. "And now? Am I finished with being your experiment?"

Tails nodded. "Hmm. Did you have some fun?"

Knuckles looked into Tails' big, blue eyes for a second or two, thinking about it, then slowly inclined his head. "I guess I had." He paused another second, before continuing silently. "Thank you."

Now Sonic grinned broader than Knuckles had thought someone could so far and Tails' eyes were shining with happiness. "It was a pleasure Knuckles," the fox said.

There was a moment of silence again, then Tails pointed at the cake. "Do we eat that thing now?"

Knuckles stared at Tails, he had completely forgotten about the cake. Now his rumbling stomach made any real answer unnecessary.

"I count that as a 'yes," Sonic snickered. "I'll get a knife and dishes." The hedgehog stood up and returned with three plates and a knife to cut the cake.

The three friends sat for a while eating and talking about this and that. "Umm, Knux? At the risk of going on your nerves for asking about your life story...", Sonic started after a while. "Tails 'n me tried finding out something about that weird puzzle of yours."

"And?" Knuckles swallowed a mouthful of cake.

Tails shook his head. "We still don't have any idea what it could mean. It doesn't make any sense. Sorry Knuckles."

"This is why I was asking. What do you know about it? We need more information," Sonic said, "about this Say… errr what-so-ever for example."

"Sayhutao," Knuckles corrected. "I don't know what that is."

"Or who. It could be a person," Sonic said, tilting his head.

"Sonic said someone told you that poem," Tails remarked, "Doesn't he know?"

Knuckles folded his arms. "I guess he did. But we can't ask him. He's dead."

Tails gasped. "He's – what? Was he killed?"

Knuckles shook his head. "No. He died peacefully of old age." The echidna leaned back against the air cushion Tails had gotten for him again when he started to report. "I was in a region at the far end of Mystic Ruins I guess, close to the border to Grand Desert Zone. Generally Mystic Ruins are told to be a good place to do treasure hunting. But I didn't find anything. I have been there for a while, then I went to a small river to take a bath and maybe camp there during the night. Later an old turtle arrived at the river too. We talked for a while and he was a nice guy. He asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him and I agreed. He was living in a small hut not far away from that riverbed. We had a nice dinner and he told me long stories, he was pretty good at that. He was very old and had seen a lot. He asked me about my people and I told him that I was the last on Mobius. He told me he was also the last, his people had gone to place all over the world many decades ago."

"How many decades. Eight? Ten?" Sonic whistled through his teeth. "Then he has to be very old."

"A few hundred years I guess. Turtles can get very old." Knuckles nodded. "It was interesting talking to him and so I decided to stay for a while. I think he was happy to have some kind of company, he was alone." Knuckles paused for a few seconds. "I have been there for four days. In the last morning he was different somehow, he appeared – I could call it zoned out somehow, as if he had something on his mind. I asked what was wrong and he said his time would be over now and he was ready to leave to the land in the heavens to meet his wife again." Knuckles paused again.

"He knew he was dying?", Tails asked.

The echidna nodded. "Yes. We sat on a rock and he told me that he had once had a very important job to take care of, like mine with the Master Emerald. He had to make sure that something was not getting into wrong hands. A treasure of great value."

Sonic leaned forwards. "What?"

Knuckles shrugged. "He didn't say. He said I would know when I saw it. He asked me to search it for him and bring it to a safe place. He thought it could be in danger again after all these years of being forgotten. No idea."

"Why didn't he just tell you were it was?", Sonic wondered. "At least he seemed to trust you, if he told that to you and asked you to get it."

"Maybe it's a test. Maybe I have to prove myself worthy or something, I don't know." Knuckles shrugged again. "But it seemed to be very important to him. I promised him to find that thing he had begged me to search." The echidna paused again. "Then he said I should go for a walk or something, he was tired and wanted to sleep. When I came back he was lying on his bed." Another moment of serious silence. "He had simply fallen asleep and not waken up any more."

Tails sighed. "That's a sad story."

"I don't know," Sonic said thoughtfully, "maybe he had a nice long life. And simply fall asleep is a nice form of dying... In a way."

Knuckles nodded. "I think he was okay with this. He was confident to see his wife again."

The three were silent for a moment, everyone occupied with his own thoughts. Tails reached over to grab Sonic's hand. The hedgehog smiled and squeezed it.

"But now I understand why that is so important to you," Sonic finally broke the silence and nodded at the echidna.

Knuckles nodded back. "It was his last wish and I made a promise. I always kept my promises before."

"And we'll help you, right Sonic?" Tails twirled his namesakes behind his back.

Sonic smiled. "You bet little bro."

Knuckles looked at them. "Thanks."

Sonic gave him a nod and yet another grin. "Can't let you search around all by yourself, ey?"

The echidna raised an eyebrow. "Of course..."

Tails glanced at the others, cutting another half serious, half playful discussion before it could start. "But when we wanna find that thing, we gotta find out what this puzzle means."

Knuckles nodded slowly, concentrating again. "But how?"

Sonic smiled. "We'll find a way. We always do. And I guess we have time with this."

Knuckles finally smiled too. Sonic's optimism was still unequalled somehow.

"But first," the hedgehog continued, "we gotta get you back to your feet."

Knuckles tilted his head. "You are doing a good job at this I guess."

Sonic smirked. "It depends on you."

"I'm doing my best."

"Never doubted that." Sonic's gaze fell on the cake again. "Do you want some more? Eating is good to get better."

"Err… Why not." Knuckles smiled when Sonic handed him another plate with a piece of the birthday cake.

"I want some more too!", Tails declared enthusiastically.

"You want more? You already had two huge pieces!" Sonic regarded the young fox. "Don't get sick."

"Won't!"

Knuckles laughed. "Give him some, Sonic. Maybe he's growing."

Sonic shrugged. "Possible."


	5. Traces

_Knuckles' date of birth was taken from official sites that claim it to be 2__nd__ February to answer that question, so -logically- if it is known, he's gotta know it himself._

_Now to get on with this story...

* * *

_

**Traces**

The warm sun shone down on him and a soft breeze gently palmed through his fur. Knuckles locked his nose with the wind and inhaled deeply. Sonic had been right, it did smell like spring.

He slowly walked along a small path that led from Tails' workshop to the lake downhill, winding slightly through the forest. In some of the narrower turns traces of sliding showed that Sonic had been using this trail for running. The ground was only barely muddy and Knuckles could see tiny flowers sticking their heads out shyly as if blinking at the first warm sun beams of the year. Seeing that, the red echidna found himself thinking about how it would look like at home now, on Angel Island. Normally nature needed longer to grow after the winter than on the surface, but the first tiny greens of a new year must be there now and they always had something magical.

After about five minutes of walking, Knuckles stopped on top of a small cliff. The path winded down aside of it, but Knuckles left it for a moment to take a look down. He liked standing in higher positions and regarding things beneath him, maybe because he had grown up on the Floating Island and always been familiar with heights. Knuckles' gaze wandered over the forest. He could spot the sparkling of the lake as a blue glittering between the trees. The echidna sighed. This really was reminding him of being home…If he had felt just a little better, Knuckles would have said screw walking along the path and take a glide down, but considering that he still found it hard walking, gliding really would have been a bad idea. So he turned around and followed the small path.

He reached the lake a few minutes later, walked along the embankment for a while, then sat down on a big rock overlooking the water. He had all the time in the world, so he could just take a break here. And it was a beautiful place to rest. The sun was shining down on the lake's surface, the light wind blurring its reflections of white and blue to a colorful image, almost blinding his eyes, but just almost.

Knuckles didn't know how long he had been sitting there admiring the scenery, when he picked up to small sounds behind him. Hadn't Sonic and Tails said they would wait for him at the house? "Sonic?", Knuckles asked, half turning over his shoulder.

"Well, see who we finally have here again," someone behind him said. And it was definitively not Sonic.

Knuckles shot to his feet and whirled around. What confronted him rendered him stunned for a moment.

_Oh crap._

About three meters away from him, eight turtles were standing, clothed in vests and a kind of sandals on their feet, all of them slightly taller than the echidna was. Knuckles gasped, the sight of them recalling things he had just been about to erase from his memory.

"Don't you have any words of welcome for us, echidna?", one of them said, stepping a little closer to Knuckles while his companions began surrounding the echidna. "You really are ungrateful. Just when we started to have such a good cooperation, you run off. The four of us warriors we send after you had to leave you alone when they were attacked by an evil spirit of Sayhutao, blue as the evening sky and fast as lightening and these members of our guild thought no warrior could fight a ghost of Sayhutao. The Emperor could convince all of us," he eyed some of his companions who were standing to his left and they lowered their eyes to the floor in shame, and the speaker continued with a snicker," that whoever they had seen and had attacked them was just a creature like us." The turtle paused, looking at Knuckles, at his fellows and back. "The persecutor group reported it would be likely that you died of your injuries, but the Emperor wants a proof that no word about the sacred diamond globe will ever leave your mouth… This is a power only we will harness!"

He grinned, somehow forcing Knuckles to brace all of his muscles. His eyes flashed around, trying to keep every single one of his opponents in sight. "I don't even know what you're talking about!", he told them, nearly shouting. He was confused, what was this guy talking about, and yes – he was scared. And knowing that he was was even more unsettling.

"You don't know?! Fool, do you really think you can trick us? We didn't believe your lies all the time. You were the last person this old idiot talked to!", the turtle shouted back, yellow eyes blazing at the echidna.

Knuckles' thoughts were now racing as fast as his heart beat. He was starting to get a hint of understanding what he was talking about, but… that didn't make any sense, did it? His thoughts were interrupted by the turtles' leader.

"All right, enough talking. He had a lot chances to cooperate with us and tell us what he knows about the sacred place. If he still has information, he will take it with him to his grave." He pointed his index finger at Knuckles. "Get him!"

As if shot from catapults, the seven other turtles leaped at Knuckles, with a speed nobody would guess a member of that particular species could develop.

Panic bringing all survival instincts into action, Knuckles dived to a crouch and slit aside, the movement much smoother than he had thought it would be. Feeling the body of a foe close to him, the echidna lashed out with his right elbow and a painful grunt showed him that he had hit something tender. He punched with both fists around him, hitting some more of his enemies. After taking two down half through skill, half out of luck, Knuckles straightened himself up to look around at what the rest of them was doing.

He noticed the movement only from the very corner of his eyes. His head snapped around, but it was too late. He could only see one of them half on the left behind him jumping up and sending a kick at him. In the next moment something hit Knuckles' still sore back. Hard. The hot pain created an explosion of colors in front of his vision and he collapsed to his knees, only barely biting down a scream.

Just the blink of an eye later multiple hands caught his shoulders and he was pressed aback to the ground. Blinking hastily to get tears of pain out of his eyes and adjust his blur vision, Knuckles found that two turtles were holding each of his legs, one was sitting on each arm, one on his chest and the last one kneeling aside of his head, glancing down on him gloatingly.

Knuckles struggled uselessly, now reaching the point where panic grew stronger than any pain. His enemies laughed about his hopeless attempts. Eight to one if the one was already injured? A ridiculous try. And Knuckles' problem was, he knew that. He was completely aware of the fact that he had no chance. He fought anyway, struggling as much as he could in his position.

A sadistic grin spread over the face of the leader. "Ha! Give it up, echidna! Your little life will be over in a few minutes," he said, his voice calm and indifferent," then we can finally leave this zone and return to the temple of the diamond globe. Do you have any last words to say, you little creep?"

Knuckles tried to look as calm as he could. He had enough sense of honor left not to lower himself into showing them he was scared. That would have been against every dignity. "Go and kill yourself," he growled, surprised how well the tone of anger and hostility hid his fear. His words really contained the worst insult he could think of, committing suicide was the most dishonorable thing in echidna society one could possibly do. It implied being too weak to handle life.

However, the turtle either didn't know that or didn't care of what he said. He just laughed. "Ridiculous," he shook his head. Then he grinned down on Knuckles. "Say goodbye my friend!" His hands moved and closed around Knuckles' throat.

Not able to breathe any more, Knuckles struggled even harder than before, now blind panic really consuming him. He could feel his heart beating painfully against his chest as if it wanted to jump out of it, his lungs started burning and the turtles' laugher was echoing in his ears. His vision was getting in and out of focus. Knuckles' head started spinning and he barely noticed the sudden gust of sharp wind and the shouting around him.

"There! The blue one!"

"Ouch! He hit me!"

"One more attack will break his armor!"

The second shouter again. "Run!"

"Leave him alone, you freaks, or taste some hedgehog quills!" Even through Knuckles' drowsiness, that sounded a lot like Sonic.

Suddenly a bang at his side jolted some of the pressure away. Reflexively Knuckles used his now free left hand to try getting the strangling hands from his throat. Around him, small bangs, pained sounds and shouting were even intensifying.

"Whhaaa!"

"He got him!"

"We have to save ourselves!"

"Help me! That freak'll crack me open!"

"You bet I will! Get lost! Or I promise I'll use my spin not only on your shells! I'm starting to like the idea of cutting your limbs or heads off with my spikes!" A blue streak rushed through the blur picture in front of Knuckles' eyes.

The weight of the enemies' bodies on top of him suddenly disappeared and the grip around his throat loosened. Knuckles clutched his hurting throat with both hands, hastily gulping some air into his ragged lungs, his eyesight switching from the blue sky above to darkness and back. Barely the echidna noticed quick footsteps running away.

"Yeah, you better get some covering distance between yourselves and me! I'm faster than sound and I'm pretty upset!"

Footsteps of a single person neared the echidna, then the still unclear image of Sonic leaned over him. "Knuckles? Are you okay?", the hedgehog asked worried.

The echidna took a shaky breath, then nodded and sat up. "Yeah, I guess."

"That was a close one," Sonic remarked.

Knuckles nodded again. "I think so." He took a quick look around, but found that he and Sonic were alone on the meadow. No signs of the attackers, as if they'd never existed. Seemed as if Sonic had made them run for it. Knuckles looked back at the hedgehog.

"Is that a new hobby of yours?", Sonic asked jokingly in spite of the situation as held his hand out at Knuckles to help him to his feet.

"Very funny, Sonic," Knuckles muttered, but accepted his hands and they started to walk back to Tails' workshop. "I should have done better than that..."

Sonic gave the echidna an assuring grin. "That's okay. Taking into account how you still look battered, you did a great job of defending yourself. I don't think anyone would have had a chance all on his own. Really, you were great."

Knuckles' face lit with a tiny smile.

"Are you gonna tell me how the hell you ran into those freaks again?", Sonic demanded curiously.

"I didn't run into them, they found me. No clue how. I walked down to the lake and sat there taking a break and enjoying myself. When I heard their footsteps, first I thought it was you." Knuckles paused, tilting his head at Sonic. "That reminds me. Why did you come anyway? Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't appreciate being still alive, but…"

Sonic shrugged. "I was bored. And I thought I'd go see if you're okay. Which proved to be a good idea."

Knuckles nodded. "I thank all the Emeralds for you instincts." The echidna took a deep breath. Then he looked at Sonic. "What did you do to them? They ran away, didn't they?"

Sonic shook his head. "I used my spin. Normally I don't use it on people. Okay, you and Shadow, 'cause I know you are tough enough to survive it, hehe. But I always have to be careful not to hit you guys with the full sharpness of my quills, I'd cut you apart. But their shells seemed like good targets, so I though it wouldn't do deadly damage. I never killed anyone and I don't plan to make that experience. But I guess it really hurt them. Not that I'd care. They tried to kill you." Sonic shrugged, then a small grin returned to his face as he continued. "They were shouting quite a lot. I guess I freaked them out with my spin. I don't know what they said, I was focused on other things. Like saving your butt."

"One of them said something about an evil spirit of –" Knuckles interrupted himself, staring at Sonic. He gasped.

Sonic frowned confusedly. "Knuckles?"

"Suddenly that begins making sense….", the echidna muttered. "This puzzle!", he then shouted at the hedgehog.

Sonic rubbed his ear and grimaced. "Nice that you're having a brainwave. How about letting me in on it? And please, quit yelling into my ears, okay?"

Knuckles blinked. "Eh.., what?"

"Never mind. So, what just made click in there?" Sonic pointed at Knuckles' forehead.

"You know the puzzle that old turtle told to me?" Knuckles said excitedly, ignoring the byplay.

"Sure I do." Sonic quirked an eye ridge.

"And there is someone mentioned called Sayhutao, right? And this turtle said, the group pursuing me thought – of course that was nonsense – but they thought they had been attacked by an evil spirit of Sayhutao! A blue spirit, fast as the wind! YOU!" Knuckles stuck his index finger at Sonic, now nearly yelling again.

Sonic stared at him with a dumbfounded look before getting out: "You mean, he called me a blue spirit of – err – whatever?"

Knuckles nodded, his long quills ruffling heavily. "They thought you were some kind of spirit. A ghost! And no one can fight a ghost. That's why they ran from you that first time!"

"Okaayyy…." Sonic said, slowly stretching the syllables of the word. "Let me get that straight, okay? You think, they – for what reason ever – believed I was a ghost of some sort and therefore they were scared of me?"

"That's the only thing that makes sense. From what they did and said…"

Sonic nodded his head, but his train of thoughts was already one step ahead. "So, whatever that Sayhu- so on is –"

"Sayhutao," Knuckles corrected.

"Whatever or whoever that _Sayhutao_ is, they know it. They know it that well that they think of someone they see as a demon of that. You, me and Tails have never heard of it, neither have Tails' encyclopedias. What means… that maybe…. that poem is also something connected with them."

Knuckles blinked, sucking in his breath. "You think, they wanted… they did all that to me just because I have heard that stupid poem… That's why they…." He shook his head in disbelief.

"Knuckles." Sonic looked at the echidna. "What did you tell them?"

Knuckles shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't tell them anything important, about the Emeralds or such stuff. I told them my name, but - Really, when they were asking all I could think of was how I could get out of there. I didn't know anything they asked. In the end I think, if they would have asked me about the size of the Master Emerald, I would have failed to know. I knew nothing any more, it was…"

Sonic put a hand on Knuckles' shoulder when his words tailed off. "So we can be more or less sure that you didn't tell them anything. At least nothing they didn't know anyway."

Knuckles lifted his gaze back up at Sonic. "I couldn't tell them anything interesting! I don't know anything. This puzzle doesn't make any sense!"

"It doesn't make any sense to _us_. Maybe we are just lacking the context. If we knew who or what it is about…"

Knuckles nodded slowly. "I guess that's right. But they don't know everything either. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to ask strangers."

"But for some reason they think you know something they don't." Sonic looked at Knuckles. "And I'm afraid they won't let you live in peace until they got it out of you, or you are out of their way."

"It must be something very valuable, something powerful." Knuckles shut his eyes when he tried to remember. "Their leader down there at the lake said something about a … 'diamond globe' and that they were the only ones to harness its power."

Sonic frowned and rubbed his nose. "So, a 'diamond globe'. Never heard of such a thing, but okay." The hedgehog paused a moment as a sudden idea struck him. "Do you think that's what the old turtle asked you to search for him?"

Knuckles shrugged. "Likely, innit?"

Sonic nodded. "I guess if we want to get rid of these freaks, we have to fight them. And we have to find that whatever-it-might-be before they do. I think that would be an advantage. And now we got a first trace."

* * *

Two weeks later it was more than a trace. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles leaned over the desk, it was cramped with small sheets of paper, books and other things.

By now they knew that the turtles were indeed searching for an artefact called 'diamond globe', although it had proved impossible to find out what that thing was and what it could be used for. But even as they still lacked information on that, they had found out a few things about the 'freaky turtles', how Sonic was used to refer to their newest enemies. Their aims or what they wanted concretely from Knuckles remained a mystery. Tails had broached the assumption that Knuckles had simply gotten in their way out of bad luck. The echidna had refused commenting that.

Parts of the puzzle poem were finally beginning to make sense. Tails had gotten the idea that it was a kind of guide to a place and it seemed as if the fox was right.

Knuckles pointed at a page of a lexicon. The upper half of the right page showed a picture. Nine figures were standing in a circle around a round object. They were turtles, wearing long capes around their shoulders. One of them was holding some sort of spear. The object they were gathered around was round like a ball, but glowing.

"So you really did find them," Sonic noticed, looking back up at the echidna.

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. This is the 'diamond globe'." He pointed at the glowing thing, then at the text below the painting. "And they are the 'Servers of the diamond'."

"'Servers of the diamond'," Tails repeated. "What are they doing there?"

"Praising it or whatever," Knuckles shrugged. "It doesn't say here. But they are not a people like you thought, Sonic. They were a religious guild."

Sonic tilted his head thoughtfully. "But this guy said they would report the Emperor."

Knuckles nodded. "They call their highest priest 'Emperor', no idea why. Maybe when the guild was formed their religious leader also was a political one. Such things were common."

The blue hedgehog raised his eyebrows. "Ah."

"I guess these – to use your terminology – freaks are at least as dangerous as Eggman. They are religious fanatics." Knuckles shook his head. "They were part of a tribe that lived in some region called the 'desert of lake'."

Tails frowned. "Desert of lake? But if there is a lake, there is water and where is water, there is no desert."

"No idea what that means." Knuckles shrugged, completely clueless. "But I know that they were only a very small group, kind of outcasts. The guild traditionally consisted if eight 'Servers' and one 'Emperor'. And their cult was prohibited. They were kinda of an illegal sect."

"Do you know what became of them later? I mean, they are obviously searching for that 'diamond globe', so they must have lost it." Sonic crossed his arms on his chest.

Knuckles turned a page of the book. "It says here one day the 'diamond globe' was taken from their hands to save its power from being abused and the guild vanished in oblivion. So did the tribe they belonged to."

"They don't appear very lost to me. And they want back that thing they once had," Sonic said, drilling one finger in his left ear. "Does it say somewhere what this diamond globe thing is capable of? What does it do?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No idea."

"Hmm." Sonic dropped his gaze to the floor, tapping his foot and watching his toes. Then he lifted his eyes back up at his friends. "And Sayhutao?"

"Ah, I almost forgot!", Tails called and dug out a book. "Here," he said, "this is a book about gods, demons and so on of all kinds of cultures."

Sonic regarded the thick book. He whistled through his teeth. "Must be a lot."

Tails opened the book and from the page a big water creature was staring at Sonic. "Perfect Chaos," the blue hedgehog recognized it immediately.

The echidna nodded. "I had a look at this already. There are a lot of nice guys in here. Somehow I find myself hoping that they are not as real as Chaos."

Tails stopped leafing at another page. It showed ten strange looking creatures. Sonic couldn't help a grin. These weird things looked like the authors of this lexicon had taken their book to a mental hospital and asked the most insane patients for drawing a picture of their nightmare monsters onto these two pages.

"This is Sayhutao," Tails pointed at a creature in the lower right corner.

It was a big blue – thing, with long hair, cheeks as if its mouth was filled with balloons, and two wings equipped a snake-like body. Around it, small and equally blue creatures were hovering, riding on long lines that came out of the creature's mouth.

"Eh, pretty," Sonic finally said. "So what is it?"

"The demon of storm," Knuckles answered him, reading the caption.

"One of the bad guys, huh?"

Tails nodded. "Yes, he can kill people with his blows. Or send his little windy servant demons to do that." He regarded Sonic. "I think because they are told to be blue and are part of the element of wind, they were afraid of you and your speed. It makes a lot of wind."

Sonic nodded back, oppressing the urge to stick out his tongue. "Stupid."

Knuckles was already looking down on the amount of paper on the table again, ignoring Sonic. "Oh, yes," he said then, looking back up, "come to talk of Sayhutao, there is a canyon named after him, it leads to this 'desert of lake'."

"Maybe we can find that place. If it is still called like that…" Sonic chewed his lip.

"I already did." The echidna reached and unrolled a map. "This is a map of the tenth continent. I don't really know if it's worthy being called a continent, I'd say it's a big island."

"One of the few places I've never been to. You can't run there because there is water all around," Sonic stated.

Knuckles looked up at him. "Yeah and you don't like water, do you?", he teased, giving the hedgehog a thump.

Sonic didn't even dignify him with a glance, he looked down on the map. Vaguely he could identify rivers and a few mountains.

Knuckles grinned a little longer, then also focused his attention on the map. "This is the area we are interested in I guess," he said and his finger ran over the map.

"Nice," Sonic commented indifferently, still looking insulted. "You two see if you can find out something more, I'm bored. I guess I'll go for a run."

Tails frowned. "Okay..." He looked after Sonic as the hedgehog strolled to the other side of the hangar. "I think he's mad at you now," he noticed, glancing up at Knuckles.

"Hey, it's not my fault that he's a stupid hydrophobic! I just made a little joke." Knuckles shrugged. "Normally he can take a few comments."

Tails grinned. "I guess he was already annoyed by this anyway." He gestured at the table.

"Needed an excuse to get away, ey? He could have just said that he's gotten itchy feet and-"

"Knuckles? Then you would have commented on _that_." Tails tilted his head. "That's it with the two of you."

For a moment the echidna looked at Tails, secretly admitting that he was kinda right, then decided to change the topic and pointed at the book Tails still kept on his laps. "You wanted to say something about that? Or do you just hold it for the fun of it?"

The fox shook his head. "No, of course not. It's one of the few books that mentions your diamond globe thing. It says here that it has something to do with the water supply on this continent. In the same time these 'Servers of the diamond' disappeared, the 'desert of lake' and the complete southern part of the continent became dry while from that on the rest stayed fruitful like before."

"Hm," Knuckles frowned. "Doesn't make much sense to me… Anything more?"

Tails sighed and leaned back on his chair. "Sorry Knuckles. I think this is really everything we can find out."

Knuckles briefly inclined his head. "That's okay. It has gotten quite a lot." He stood up and stretched his arms above his head. At least the weeks they had needed to find the information they now had had been enough for him to recover. The echidna looked back at Tails. "Okay, what do we do now?"

Tails grinned. "We could get some dinner, but that be kinda cruel, don't you -"

BANG!

Tails broke off and winced when the house suddenly shook with a loud boom from outside. The hangar portal had gotten a deep dent, but it held. "What was that?!"

"Don't know! Trouble!", Knuckles answered, already on the way to the door.

Tails followed him hastily. The two stepped out of the house. Knuckles' eyes quickly scanned the surroundings. No one here. Just in front of the portal, the green meadow now showed a black mark and smoke was rising. There had been an explosion but what –

"Knuckles!", Tails shouted and interrupted the echidna's thinking. The two tailed fox pointed at the treeline a few meters away from the house that marked his airstrip.

Knuckles' jaw dropped. "What the-"

The two hurried over and looked up to where Sonic was hanging as if glued to the stem in the tree, just high enough that his feet couldn't reach the ground. The hedgehog struggled anyway.

"Sonic? What did you do?" Tails stared up at their friend.

"Don't just stand there and look at me! Get me down!" Sonic struggled again as if to empathize his words.

Knuckles walked around the tree and looked at whatever Sonic had done there. He snickered in spite on Sonic's pitiful look and the strange situation. "That's a new use for these things on your back..."

"Get me the hell down, Knucklehead! Or I'll – I'll … hang you up here once I do get down! And I–"

"Okay, okay, shut up," Knuckles gave in annoyedly, grabbed Sonic's arms and pulled, after a hard jolt sending the blue hedgehog flying to the floor. Sonic picked himself up cursing.

"Hey, hey, easy. Are you okay?" Tails tried calming him.

Sonic slowly stroked over his spikes instead of an answer. "… my quills still feel like quills."

Tails frowned, then his gaze fell on the tree. The stem was showing multiple small holes. "You shouldn't pin yourself into trees, Sonic…"

Sonic grimaced. "Very funny."

"What happened?" Knuckles looked Sonic up and down.

The hedgehog shrugged vaguely. "I stood here deciding whether I'd take the route through the forest or the one in the hills, when I saw someone over there." He pointed at the far away forest. "One of those diamond freaks. I wanted to run for him, but something blew up here and I was thrown into this –" he shot the stem an acid glance - "this stupid tree here."

"At least they are not afraid of you any more and seem to have learned you aren't some kind of ghost," Tails put in thoughtfully. "Maybe their boss really is not as superstitious as the underlings that were sent after Knuckles that first time."

"Think that is good?" Sonic gestured wildly in front of Tails' face. "He tried to blow me up! I nearly stabbed myself in that tree! That was-"

"Sonic!", Knuckles shouted interrupting him and the hedgehog blinked, suddenly silent. "_Calm down_. Nothing really happened."

"He got away! That stupid bomb throwing freak got away!"

"Do you think you can still get him now? Then go ahead or at least get yourself back to some kind of normal state." Knuckles grabbed Sonic's wrists. "And now you take a deep breath." Sonic looked at him for a second or two as if considering if he should try and wriggle out of Knuckles' grip, but to the echidna's surprise he didn't, instead inhaled and let the air out with a sigh. Knuckles released him. "See? Better?"

Sonic shifted his gaze over at the far away forest. "You wouldn't like getting pinned into trees either," he muttered, but seeming a lot calmer already.

The echidna quirked an eye ridge, but didn't comment on that. "Okay, let's get inside first. The house proved to be safe I guess."

The others followed him. Tails regarded Sonic. "You're bleeding," he pointed out.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "That's just scrapes."

Knuckles glanced over at where Sonic had seen the turtle. "I wonder if this was a warning or an assassination attempt."

Sonic rubbed the back of his head. "Warning is distending it a bit, don't you think?"

Knuckles just shrugged.


	6. Desert

**Desert**

It was early in the next morning. Sonic leaned against the side of the Tornado when he heard Knuckles' footsteps from behind and turned to him. "Mornin'."

"Morning," Knuckles gave back. For a moment it was quite again, then Knuckles looked at Sonic seriously. "What are you thinking about?"

Sonic's gaze wandered to the dented portal. "Looks like we got in someone's way more or less accidentally. Here's something really stinking, Knux. I've encountered enough insane schemes to recognize one when I see it. And that someone blows up a bomb to get rid of one single person really indicates some deep crap."

The echidna tilted his head, thoughtfully rubbing the spikes on his hands. "So we're in war again, Sonic. But this time not against Robotnik."

"What means we have less known quantities. This could be a problem. When we have to go searching that thing, we have to go to this 'desert of lake' I guess. And somehow I think our new friends know that place much better than we do." Sonic shook his head slightly. "At least one of them was here yesterday. They didn't manage to kill me, but while we were still surprised, those guys could have gotten anywhere." The hedgehog sighed.

Knuckles tilted his head. "As far as we found out, the part of the continent they somehow come from is some sort of restricted area, right? Nearly completely deserted and should therefore be difficult to pass. I don't think that they'll be fast. Although a day's lead is quite a lot."

Sonic nodded. "What about Tails?", he asked. "I really don't like getting him into this. They found you very fast and they found me very fast, so it's likely they'll find him too. And he's still a kid. He's my little bro, I'm responsible for him. I don't want him to be in danger. At least in none we don't know and can't calculate. We need a safe place for him to stay at while the two of us are gone."

Knuckles raised his eyebrows. "You do take him along fighting Robotnik and his metallic killer machines," he pointed out. "I don't see that as much less dangerous."

Sonic turned fully to him. "No, it isn't less dangerous, if you want to rate the grade of danger in statistics or something. But it's another kind of it. I have been fighting Eggman almost as long as I can remember. And Tails always alongside me. And yes, he did indeed save my butt more often than I can count. I need him, his cleverness, his flying skills, his support and sometimes his ability to cheer me up. I do very much." Sonic paused a moment, taking a slow breath. "But I'm always a bit worried about him. Tails can deal with Eggman. Eggman might be an insane freak, he might be our arch enemy, unscrupulous, egoistic, dangerous and having a tendency to blow things up and cause a lot of trouble, but there is one thing he is just as much."

Knuckles stared and frowned.

"Predictable," Sonic continued and once again made a brief pause after the word. "We know him. We know his – call it style of doing things. We all know how to fight him. Even though he still manages to surprise us from time to time." The blue hedgehog leaned sidewards against the biplane. "Tails knows very well when it's time to better search cover and I know when to push him out of the line of fire. I have developed an instinct for fighting Eggman and his bots."

Knuckles slowly inclined his head. "Okay…"

"But I have no way to discern those diamond searching freaks. In combat, honest Knux, one Eggman robot is highly more dangerous than a small army of those guys. But this is no open fight. These are the creepy cowards that sneak up on you from behind. I can put myself into this danger. But if I have to worry about watching over Tails, this is distracting. I couldn't concentrate on what's really important then…" Sonic sighed.

"I guess I understand," Knuckles nodded slowly although he had no idea if he really did. "But I guess he's not going to like it if you tell him that mission is too dangerous for him."

Sonic shrugged, feeling slightly helpless. "Then let him be mad at me. But better he's mad at me than injured or dead. I don't think I could deal with this."

Knuckles fell silent for a moment. "What if we send him up to Angel Island? It's safe there I guess."

"Sounds like a good idea to me." Sonic nodded. Then a flicker of a smile flashed over his face. "And it gives me an idea how to prevent that he won't talk to us ever again."

"Huh?" Knuckles wrinkled his brow, raising his eyebrows at Sonic.

"But I'll need your help for this."

The red echidna regarded the hedgehog for a moment, reading his eyes, then he nodded.

* * *

Tails found Sonic and Knuckles eating breakfast in the kitchen. "Good morning," he greeted when he pulled a third chair to the table. "How long have you been up?"

"About an hour," Knuckles answered him, putting down his cup. "And Sonic some more, he was already up when I woke."

"I've been on a morning run," Sonic added to Knuckles' words, then took a huge bite of his toast.

Tails smiled. "Can I have some toast too?"

"Here," Knuckles passed him a plate.

"Someone else wanting one?" Tails looked round while he put his bread into the toaster.

Sonic gestured at his thick sandwich and Knuckles shook his head. "I'm done."

Tails took a piece of bread when it came out again and started eating. "So what do we do today?", he asked chewing.

"Knux and I will go to search that artifact," Sonic explained.

"What about me?" Tails quirked an eye ridge at the blue hedgehog.

But it was Knuckles who answered. "I wanted to ask you for a favor Tails."

The fox nearly jumped in surprise. Knuckles was asking a favor? Him? "Errr… What favor?"

"You see, I've got to go search this artifact, I promised. But it's a dangerous time and someone needs to guard the Emerald." Knuckles looked at Tails.

"You… you… you're asking ME to … guard your … Master Emerald?", Tails stammered.

"Just for a few days."

Tails felt a broad grin spreading over his face. "I'll do Knuckles! Your Emerald will be the safest Emerald in the world!"

Sonic laughed. "Watch out, Knux, if he keeps being that enthusiastic, you'll lose your job soon!"

Knuckles smiled. "Don't think so."

* * *

The landscape outside slowly changed from green fields to stony boredom. Sonic looked out the train's window. He had been doing this for the last one and a half hour. The train went from the main station in the biggest town around to the edge of the desert in the south of the continent. Apart from Sonic and Knuckles mostly weekend tourists rode the train and advertising posters all over the train's interior offered jeep safaris and trips to 'experience the desert'. But somehow Sonic doubted that any of the tourists would be able to survive in something that came only close to being a desert.

Sonic looked back from the window. Knuckles was sitting across of him on one of the wooden benches, eyes closed. In fact, he was sitting like that almost as long as they were here. Aside of the echidna a bag lay on the seating. Sonic shifted on his seat, leaning his back against the window and resting his feet on the bench.

"Sonic?", Knuckles said suddenly, without opening his eyes.

"What?"

"Get your feet off the seating."

Sonic raised an eyebrow. How did he know… "Why?"

Knuckles finally opened his eyes. "It's impolite."

Sonic smirked. "Ah, look who's talking, the great expert on Mobian behavior rules."

Knuckles grimaced. "Very funny." He gestured at Sonic's feet." I meant it, Sonic."

The blue hedgehog groaned, but sat upright again. "Are you my mummy?"

"No. I just don't want to have to pay for the cleaning when someone sees you, because as far as I can see, you don't have any money."

Sonic grinned. "Wrong. I do."

Knuckles looked him up and down. "Where?"

"In a small pocket in my sock."

Knuckles finally smirked. "And people do accept stuff that smells like rotted cheese?"

Sonic folded his arms and flinched. "My socks don't stink."

"Ah, they don't? Then remind me again what was that stuff that was lying around on the floor in Tails' workshop?", Knuckles teased.

"Err… Never saw anything like that!" Sonic laughed and even Knuckles allowed himself a chuckle. The hedgehog pointed at Knuckles' bag. "What's in it?"

"Things I considered useful."

Sonic reached for the bag and started digging into it. "Ah, flashlights! – Very helpful when it's dark." He put them on the seating, then continued digging and commenting on everything he unearthed in the depths of Knuckles' bag. "Bottles with water. Apples. – Food's always good. – Tapes? – Can't hurt. – Rope. – Rope? – What for?" Sonic looked back up at the echidna, eyebrows raised.

Knuckles shrugged. "Ropes can often be helpful. To climb, to catch something, to tie the enemies… or annoying hedgehogs that mess up my entire supplies…"

Sonic pulled a face and tossed the things he had taken out back into the bag. "I would have remained silent. I was you who started talking this time," the hedgehog pointed out.

Knuckles feigned an oppressed sigh. "Maybe that was a mistake."

* * *

"Are you two sure you are right here?", the conductor asked skeptically, regarding Knuckles and Sonic when they neared the last station.

"Sure," Knuckles retorted and walked down the stairs of the wagon, the bag on his shoulder.

Sonic shrugged, nodded a goodbye at the conductor and followed his friend.

The two got out of the train at the terminal. It wasn't really worth being called a station, it was a small, wooden hut, more a sunshade than a building. The other passengers had gotten off the train one station earlier.

Sonic looked around, regarding the sand and rocks all around. "This really is the end of the world."

Knuckles shrugged. "What did you expect?"

"At least someone selling ice cream. That would be a hit at this place," Sonic replied with a broad grin.

Knuckles shook his head. "Sure, if there was anyone to buy it."

"I would." Sonic grinned even broader, fully aware that he was getting on Knuckles' nerves.

"Come on," the echidna said, ignoring the hedgehog's kidding. "That way."

Sonic shrugged, shot a last glance at the small station, then followed the echidna when he headed out into the desert. Maybe it was good that nobody could see them now, he would have thought both of them were crazy.

* * *

Sand.

Sand and rock. From one horizon to the other. At least the sky above wore a different color. It was bright blue and cloudless. The sun was now burning down vertically.

Sonic kicked a small stone with his toes. He was bored. This place wasn't exactly entertaining, there was nothing to see apart from sand, rock, sand, sand, rock, sky, sand and – Knuckles. Sonic had expected this trip to be exiting somehow, no matter in which way, but this was just – boring.

If Knuckles was as bored as Sonic was impossible to tell. The echidna was stomping straight through the sand dunes, heading in the direction the entrance to Sayhutao's canyon was described to be situated.

Sonic looked around, wiping some sweat from his forehead. It was hot here and right now the blue hedgehog really wished for just a tiny breeze of cooling wind. Then he spotted something that definitively didn't belong to the expected categories of things to normally see in the boredom of a desert. A stick. "Hey, Knux. Look!"

"It's some kind of sign," the echidna nodded, pointing towards the thing.

"I'll check it out!", Sonic shouted, zipped away from Knuckles' side and ran for the spotted object. It really was a sign, attached to a wooden stick. Sonic stopped in front of it.

"DANGER! Restricted area. Danger of death. Trespassing at own risk," the hedgehog read aloud. A small pictograph aside of the text showed a skull. Sonic turned to Knuckles when the echidna approached. "I guess here starts the interesting part of the trip," Sonic grinned and gestured at the sign.

Knuckles read the text, then looked at Sonic. "You remember why it is restricted?"

Sonic gave a half nod. "Because many people died in this desert. The authorities decided it's too dangerous here. This kind of area is pretty big. Nearly the entire desert. Only two or three roads pass this region, they lead to the farms on the other end of it."

"They died, ey? Of what?"

Sonic shrugged. "Heat, lack of water, sunstroke, sandstorms," he listed, "no idea. This is a desert."

Knuckles looked at the sign again. "Fine then. A nice, deadly place." He waved at Sonic. "After you."

Sonic grinned and hopped over the imaginary border the sign created. "Oh no! Now I'm in the deadly desert. Knuckles, save me!" He rolled his eyes dramatically and collapsed backwards, landing in the sand with a thud.

Knuckles groaned and stepped over Sonic. "Come on."

Sonic lifted his head. "Why should I?"

"Because I got the supplies," the echidna answered dryly.

Sonic leaped to his feet and zipped to Knuckles' side. "Point."

Knuckles just shook his head. "Will you ever grow up, Sonic?"

The hedgehog grinned. "Err… No?"

* * *

Knuckles took a few sips of the water, then put the bottle back into the bag.

"Hey, I want some too!", Sonic complained.

Knuckles shook his head. "You already had. We have to spare our water."

Sonic flinched. "How far is it now?"

"I guess about two hours till we reach the canyon," Knuckles replied.

Sonic sighed. "This is taking forever. I understand that we should take it slower in this canyon 'cause it could be dangerous, but this here… There's nothing in our way. Can't we just go a bit faster?"

Knuckles looked at him. "If your head feels as hot as mine, I can't understand that you want to run now. We'll only use up our water faster. And we have only the bit we brought until we reach the oasis at the canyon's entrance."

"Oasis?"

"Yeah, oasis. The map we looked at before we went showed one. It's the only place with water in the entire desert." Knuckles shrugged. "I guess it's just a small lake with some plants."

"But since it is green, you can very well see it in all this sand, can't you? That means we can't miss it."

Knuckles sighed. "You are not planning to stop going on my nerves until I say yes, are you?"

Sonic grinned. "Admit it, you don't like walking through all this boring desert either."

The echidna rolled his eyes and groaned. "Okay, I don't."

"Then let me speed things up. And it's only me who will have to run, you just hold on to my arm and enjoy the ride." Sonic grinned.

"Okay, okay, deal. But only if you do an acceleration that will leave my arm where it belongs."

"Huh?"

"I don't like still standing here while my arm is already one mile ahead with you." Knuckles threw Sonic a side-glance.

The blue hedgehog snickered. "Fine, deal. I'll start it gently." He held his hand out at Knuckles, the echidna grabbed his wrist and Sonic started running, speeding up until Knuckles was weightlessly gliding on the wind Sonic's speed created.

"Faster Knuckles?", Sonic asked with a smile over his shoulder.

"How fast can you go?", the echidna gave back with a smile, knowing that doubting Sonic's speed was almost an insult.

Sonic's smile broadened to a grin. "This is not even half the speed I can easily keep up for hours. And admit it, the wind is cooling, isn't it?"

"It is, alright. Happy now?"

"Of course," Sonic answered, accelerating some more, "I like running!"

Knuckles grinned. "I know that."

Sonic turned back forwards, lowering his head into the wind and enjoying the strong breeze.

* * *

"There!" Sonic slowed down and Knuckles' feet regained some grounding. The hedgehog was pointing down the small dune they stood on. Beneath their position lay an oasis, green plants picking out against the desert sand. Almost in the midst of it, a black hole was gaping in a rock.

"Black on green, right?" Knuckles allowed himself a small smile.

"We're closing in," Sonic grinned.

Only a few minutes later, the two were standing in front of the entrance to a tunnel filled with black darkness. Knuckles opened the bag and both of them took a flashlight, tying it to their wrists so they couldn't lose it. Then they started into the cave.

It ended only two minutes later and opened to a narrow canyon. Sonic and Knuckles started following it.

* * *

"Hey Knux! Look at that! It's amazing!" Sonic turned over his shoulder to the red echidna.

"What is it?", Knuckles asked, following Sonic's call around the turn of the canyon.

Sonic pointed when Knuckles stepped at his side. "That!"

The echidna gasped fascinatedly. "Wow…"

What was in front of the two friends really was a reason to stare at. The wall to their left was covered completely, what meant two hundred meters upwards and no idea how far, with some sort of crystallized material, bright blue in color. The crystal grew out of the rocky wall, forming protruding shapes like spikes.

Sonic struck out a hand and carefully ran a fingertip over the blue things on the wall, but winced and quickly pulled away when it nearly cut him. "Whoa! Watch out, Knux. We better stay clear off these! They are sharp!"

Knuckles swallowed a laugh. "And I always though as a hedgehog you should be used to sharp things…"

Sonic grimaced. "Funny."

The echidna stepped to the wall, closely regarding the blue spikes. "Looks a bit like icicles. But it grows horizontally. Normally, every icicle or stalactite grows downwards, because of gravity."

Sonic shrugged. "These here don't."

Knuckles still stared at the wall. "If this is the canyon of Sayhutao…", he began thoughtfully, "then I guess I can at least partly understand why they thought you are a spirit of this demon or whatever."

Sonic tilted his head, glancing up and down the wall, then running his fingers through his spikes. "You mean … one can see sort of a resemblance?"

Knuckles nodded. ""Blue spikes," he pointed at the wall, "Blue spikes," he pointed at Sonic.

"Sounds convincing," Sonic smirked. "Do we go? Or do you plan to grow roots here?"

The echidna shook his head, not dignifying the hedgehog with an answer and Sonic started walking along the crystal wall, his eyes being pulled over to it again and again.

The narrow canyon suddenly did a 90 degree turn to the left. Squeezing past the blue crystal spikes, Sonic and Knuckles stepped into another canyon, not much less narrow than the last, but they could walk side by side in here. It seemed long and straight, the ground covered with sand.

Sonic looked down on it and stopped in surprise, kneeling down. The sand wasn't lying plain or chaotically like it normally did, it formed tiny hills and valleys. "What is that?", the hedgehog wondered.

Knuckles knelt down at his side. "Weird," he said, "as if a wave had formed the sand."

Sonic nodded.

Knuckles stood up again and walked forwards. He had only gotten two meters, when a loud click echoed through the canyon. The echidna froze.

Sonic jerked upright. "Knuckles?! What was that?!"

The echidna turned around halfway, somehow not daring to move. "Don't know. I didn't do anything!"

"You stepped on something! Maybe some sort of trap!"

"What do we do now?"

"Err… Don't move. I'll try –"

Sonic was interrupted by a loud growling all around, like a coming thunderstorm roaring just above their heads.

"What is that?!", the hedgehog shouted, then was suddenly hit by an invisible punch and knocked to the floor.

He struggled back to his feet, only to be hit again, stronger this time. A sharp blow of wind. No, of storm.

Sonic leveled himself to his knees, lowering his head a bit. Another blow stroke. Just what was that? The wind wasn't blowing constantly, it came in a pulsing frequency. Wait…

"Whaaa!", Knuckles' yelp pushed Sonic's thoughts away. The echidna was on the ground a few meters in front of him, pressing himself to the sand, holding the floor with both hands. A new blow stroke and lifted Knuckles up a few inches as if he weighed nothing. When it passed, the echidna dropped back to the ground, now some closer to Sonic.

And then Sonic realized what was happening. Knuckles' long spikes gave him the ability to glide by catching air and riding on it. But they also caught the blows of wind here…

"Whaa!", Knuckles yelped again when yet another stormy blow made itself known, they were getting stronger quickly. This one really lifted the echidna up, Knuckles struggled helplessly to get back down, but couldn't help it.

Sonic reached out, snapping upwards to his feet, and his fingers caught around Knuckles' wrist and both of them were flung to the floor.

"Sonic! It will blow us into the spikes!", Knuckles shouted at him over the wind. The air was starting to fill with sand.

Sonic's gaze flashed backwards. The blue spikes were sticking their tips at them. Had they seemed like a fascinating wonder of nature a few minutes ago, now they appeared to him as hundreds of daggers waiting to stab them. The hedgehog gasped. This really was a trap. A death trap.

A new wave of storm caught them, getting under Knuckles' dreads, pushing the echidna and the hedgehog clinging to his arm towards the deadly spikes. Knuckles tried to tuck his spines as close to his head as possible and half regained his feet.

Sonic was also standing up again. Behind them lay certain death, the only way to safety was forwards. Half hunkering, the hedgehog pushed his feet into the sand. Hard and fast muscles tensed when Sonic started running. The sand seemed to swallow nearly all of his power he desperately needed to move forwards, and what remained was neutralized by storm blowing into his face.

It was growing ever stronger and stronger, now not only as a short, strong blow and then a windless break, now there was storm all the time, but interrupted by even stronger blows. The sand was whirling around, making it hard to breathe. Sonic gasped, trying not to inhale too much sand. He did anyway. His lungs started burning, if through too much sand or just strain, the hedgehog couldn't tell.

Sonic's feet were now humming on the ground, still without any real success in moving forwards. It seemed no use. Knuckles somewhat hopping at his side, trying to run once his feet touched the ground, then again in the air like a kite, intensifying the grip the wind got on Sonic.

Risking a glance back over his shoulder, the hedgehog was struck with lightening force by realizing how close these crystal blades were. But his shock seemed to have a good effect, it flooded Sonic's veins with adrenaline, mobilizing energy the hedgehog hadn't known he had. Slowly, very slowly, the hedgehog's feet moved forwards. Knuckles had grabbed his wrist now with both hands, his feet now longer able to keep up with Sonic and the wind. Sonic lowered his head as he ran as fast as he possibly could.

A new blow stroke him as a punch in his entire body. Sonic gasped as he got the breath knocked out of him and he staggered backwards, desperately trying to stay on his feet. He didn't know if he could stand up again. The wind was screaming in his ears.

Then he noticed Knuckles' grip loosen. "Don't – you – dare to – let – go!", the hedgehog pressed out, knowing what Knuckles was thinking about.

"Sonic," the echidna's answer was barely understandable over the strong wind although he was yelling at the top of his lungs, "It'll kill both of us!"

Sonic tightened his own grip until his fingers hurt. He would never ever let go of his friend's hand to save himself! Never! The hedgehog narrowed his eyes. He scanned the path in front of him. There! He could spot something like a hole in a wall at the far end of the canyon. Infinity away. But maybe that was the way out…

Streamlining his form as much as possible, Sonic pushed his body to its limits. His heart was beating hard against his ribs, his hasty draws of breath seemed unable to fulfill his body's demand for oxygen. The wind seemed to get stronger with every meter he covered forwards and Knuckles was getting ever heavier and heavier. But the presumed exit was approaching, incredibly slowly, but it was.

Five hundred meters maybe. Then four hundred.

Sonic didn't know how long he was running now, it seemed like eternity. The wall in front of them was clearing and it really had a hole. Blurry Sonic could glimpse sandy landscape through it.

Two hundred meters. One hundred and fifty. One hundred.

Feeling that if he couldn't make it fast, he would never make it, the blue hedgehog activated the last energy he had. It seemed like he was running straight against a wall. A hard wall of compressed air. He lowered his head slightly more, pushing against it with all his might. Then it suddenly gave way and every pressure was gone from one second to the next.

His momentum catapulted him forwards, then the hedgehog's foot was caught by a stone and he tripped, crashing head-first into the sand. Sonic coughed, pushing his face out of the dust, and rolled to his back, closing his eyes. Then he just lay there, sucking air into his ragged lungs, still not able to stop coughing. It felt so good to relax and just enjoy the exhausted relief of having finally and admittedly more than narrowly made it through, that Sonic didn't want to destroy the feeling.

The moment was broken when Knuckles called his name. "Sonic!"

Sonic opened his eyes, tilting his head towards his friend. "What?"

"Can I get my hand back? It's just that I'm losing feeling in my fingers."

"Oh." Sonic let go. He hadn't even noticed that his hand was still closed around Knuckles' wrist with an iron grip. "Sorry."

"It's okay." Knuckles sat up and briefly rubbed his wrist, looking down on the blue hedgehog. "_I'm_ sorry Sonic."

Sonic raised an eyebrow. "What – for?", he panted.

"Expecting you to let go." Knuckles shifted uncomfortably. "I … It's just … I had to… you know?"

Sonic nodded wearily. "I know, Knux. Maybe I might have done the same. And you wouldn't have let go either."

"But… We could both be dead."

Sonic's green eyes locked gaze with Knuckles'. "Being dead would be much better than alive and having to live with knowing _your_ death saved _my_ life. At least _I_ could never forgive me that." Sonic paused, then a smile crossed his face. "And you got the supplies, right?"

The red echidna smiled too, then nodded, serious again. "Guess you're right," he said, much more to the first part of Sonic's speech than the joking second. He paused a moment before he continued. "Thank you. For a while I thought you wouldn't make it."

Sonic grimaced, but then his face was crossed by a grin. "I always do." The hedgehog ran a hand over his face, wiping off sweat and dirt.

When he looked up, Knuckles was already standing a couple of meters away from him, arms crossed on his chest, eying the hole in the rock they had just come through.

Sonic sat up. "Maybe you shouldn't get close to that. _Especially_ you."

Knuckles reached down to grab a handful of sand, then threw it at the wall. When it came near it, it was sucked into the hole. The echidna stepped backwards. "Sounds like a great idea." He grabbed one of his long spines and drilled it between his fingers. "This was the first time I found out some disadvantages about these," he said quietly.

Sonic shrugged. "You just stay away from such windy places and you're fine."

"Talking about fine: What about you? You wanna take a break after that?"

Sonic shook his head. "No, I'm good. I just needed a moment to find out if more blood or adrenaline runs through my veins."

The echidna grinned. "And? Do we have to take a sample now or did you come to a conclusion yourself?"

"I guess it's starting to be more blood again," Sonic smiled.

Knuckles snickered.

"I think we just encountered 'Sayhutao's heart beat that blows'", Sonic noticed with a nod towards the way they had come.

"It nearly blew us to death," Knuckles pointed out.

"I guess you activated this wind when you stepped on some kind of hidden switch or something," Sonic said.

Knuckles nodded once. "This really was a trap meant to kill every trespasser. We only made it through because of your speed. Every other persons…" He didn't finish his sentence, it was clear anyway.

Sonic nodded. "Whatever is in this mysterious desert, somebody doesn't want us to see it." The hedgehog eyed the hole in the rocks again. "I still don't understand how the wind is caused. It starts in that hole, directly out of nowhere. There is nothing to be the source."

Knuckles shrugged. "Magic maybe."

Sonic disbelievingly raised an eyebrow at his friend, wondering if he really considered that or if he was joking. "Magic."

Knuckles just shrugged again.

Getting no answer to his questions, neither from the mysterious phenomenon nor from his red friend, Sonic started stretching his legs.

Knuckles watched him for a moment. "Something I should be worried about?"

Sonic shook his head. "I'm fine."

Knuckles tilted his head, regarding the hedgehog a little longer, then turned away, stepping past Sonic and taking the first real look at where they landed. After a while Sonic joined the echidna. They stood in a sand dune, one of hundreds of its kind. The formerly narrow canyon had widened to a sort of square, a few hundreds of meters large and nearly round. It was surrounded by tall walls of rock.

"Do we search for a way out here now? The path should continue somewhere," Sonic said, green eyes peering around.

Knuckles gave a nod. "Okay, let's go."

* * *

It took them long to find the way out and then they would almost have missed it. They had started walking along the rocky walls as that was the easiest way to find an exit. Sonic was already several meters ahead of Knuckles, when the echidna called him back.

"Hey Sonic, here!"

The hedgehog turned around and zipped to Knuckles' side. "Where?"

"Up there!" Knuckles pointed up the wall.

"Ah." Sonic regarded the rocks.

"Can you get up –" Knuckles started, but interrupted his sentence when Sonic took a few steps back, accelerated and rushed up the wall. "– there," Knuckles finished anyway when the hedgehog disappeared over the edge.

Sonic's head struck over the rock only one second later. "You coming Knux?"

Instead of an answer, the echidna punched his spiky fists into the wall and climbed up to Sonic, finding a small path.

* * *

Sonic pointed forwards. "There!"

Knuckles looked past the hedgehog and nodded.

The way they had been walking on in the last minutes ended at a pit, about 60 meters wide. A small suspension bridge led over it, it was not even really worth being called a bridge, it was merely a bundle of wooden sticks tied to two ropes.

Sonic stepped to the very edge and looked down, then whistled through his teeth and turned back to Knuckles. "I guess a few hundred meters."

The echidna winked forwards. "Okay, go. But, Sonic!", he called when the hedgehog already put one foot on the bridge. "Slowly!"

Sonic turned back. "I won't bust it." He took another step forwards.

The blue hedgehog had finished almost half of the way, when a rumbling behind him drew his attention. Sonic turned around, as fast as he dared with nothing to hold on to and suspending hundreds of meters above the ground.

He saw that Knuckles had stepped to the edge where he had been standing a minute before. The echidna was looking around, confused struggling to hold his balance. The ground he was standing on was shaking.

What the hell is going on?

Sonic had to stretch out his arms, the small bridge was now swaying heavily. The hedgehog stared over at Knuckles. And then Sonic glimpsed something really strange, a small line of – yeah, of light, running from the rock to Knuckles' left to his head, where it disappeared. Just when Sonic watched, the shaking ground kicked the echidna out of balance and he ended up in a crouch, the weird line suddenly reaching the other side of the gap in the rock the way they had come was passing.

Sonic had no more time to rack his brains about what happened over there, the tiny bridge he was still standing on was swaying now as if it wanted to shake the hedgehog off. Sonic decided to take the way forwards and spun around, then quickly hopped from one step to the next.

But suddenly it was as if the anyway not solid ground underneath his feet had vanished completely, Sonic tripped, fell on his belly and then was jolted downwards. After what felt like a little eternity, he crashed against something very hard and got the wind knocked out of him. For a moment Sonic was stunned, not able to think or move, then he finally managed to open his eyes again. He looked at rock.

"Uh…" Sonic blinked. He felt strange, not only dazed from impact, no, something else. He turned a bit, noticing belatedly that his arms were beside his head as if pulled up by a strange force.

What the hell…? Sonic turned his head, looking up, or to what he _thought_ was up. He saw the ground, several hundred meters above him.

Wait…. The ground was _above_ him? Grounds _never_ were above people. Sonic shook his head. Damn that stupid muzziness!

His legs ached and Sonic looked himself down. His feet had been caught between two of the wooden treads and one of the bridge's ropes had knotted itself around his left ankle.

Sonic's fogged-up mind needed a moment to realize where he actually was, or more accurately, _how_ he was.

Hanging upside-down over a deep pit. Everything that was standing between this momentary state and a long fall to the far away ground was a thin rope.

The realization struck the hedgehog with lightening force and he winced, then yelped when that hasty movement resulted in a short jolt downwards. "WHAA!"

* * *

_Welcome to the official beginning of the adventure part of the story! Took a hell of a while to reach it, but I finally did ,-)_


	7. Boobytrapped

**Boobytrapped**

Knuckles toppled forwards, nearly falling head-first into the pit. Reflexively he reached out and his spikes caught hold in a rock, the jolt threw Knuckles off his feet. The bag he had been wearing on his shoulder slit off and tumbled over the edge, but there were far more important things to worry about now than this bag.

The red echidna pushed himself to a crouch. The whole ground underneath his feet had suddenly started to shake. Was that an earthquake? Knuckles looked around. No, as far as he could see, and this realization was strange enough, the only shaking thing was the cliff he was standing on. And the cliff on the opposite side of the gulf. And of course the bridge.

The bridge? Sonic! Knuckles looked over at the hedgehog. Sonic had been looking back at him, now turned around and ran for the other side, but he had only gotten a few meters, when the stones that held the bridge were yanked out of their hold in the cliff and scraped over the ground, then disappeared over the edge.

Knuckles leaped to the edge to see what had happened to the hedgehog. He saw the bridge crashing with a loud noise against the vertical wall of rocks on the other side of the pit, Sonic hanging upside-down on it.

"Sonic! Are you okay?!", Knuckles shouted, but the hedgehog didn't reply.

Suddenly the cliff Knuckles was kneeling on toppled forwards, the echidna jumped backwards reflexively, only to find that the rock he was standing on now didn't seem more trustworthy than the last one. All of them seemed to have a weird tendency to do a header into the gulf. Knuckles didn't.

"WHAA!", Sonic's yelp let the red echidna whirl around. The bridge, or more accurately what remained of it, had just done a short jolt downwards and one of the two ropes was clearly torn now.

"Sonic!"; Knuckles shouted while he still struggled not to be thrown into the pit along with all the rocks he stood on. "Don't move! I'll come and get you! Just hang on!"

The echidna looked into the canyon, then over to the other side. "I need to cross that thing anyway," he muttered, then leaped clear over the edge and caught himself in a glide.

Almost immediately a sharp gust of wind pushed him upwards and to the left. "Whoa!" And he thought he had been done with all that wind. Looked like that had been a false assumption.

Knuckles' glide over to the other side was much less elegant than his glides used to be normally, the winds were literally toying with the echidna, a bit like the fall winds below Angel Island, but still different because of the warmth here.

But finally Knuckles kind of dropped against the wall and drove his spikes into the rock, quickly climbing upwards. He pulled himself over the edge, trying his best to ignore the shaking ground. His hands closed around the rope of the bridge and he pulled.

It was heavier than he had thought it would be, but it was working. Slowly and cautiously, Knuckles pulled the bridge up. After about a minute, he had finally pulled Sonic's feet into reach, grabbed them and lifted the hedgehog up. A short struggle loosened his feet from the remains of the bridge and Sonic sat up.

"Thank you, Knux," he said a little shakily, "Really, I own you one."

"You're welcome. Now can we get out of here?"

Sonic stood up and nearly fell again when the ground shook heavier. "Sounds like a great plan!"

Knuckles just nodded and the two ran away from the gulf and through another canyon, until they couldn't hear the rumbling of falling stones any more.

Sonic stopped, leaning his hands on his knees, and shook his head. "Uhh…"

Knuckles stepped closer. "Hey, are you okay?" Sonic looked up at him, his face chalk-white, and Knuckles knew instantly what the problem was. "Lay down," he commanded.

Sonic looked puzzled. "What?"

"I told you to lay down. Nature just told you that hedgehogs are not related to bats."

Sonic frowned confused, but let himself slip to the ground. "Huh?"

Knuckles tilted his head at his blue companion. "Bats can hang head-down all the time, hedgehogs evidently not," he explained. "Your circulation isn't made for that."

"Oh." Sonic let his head fall back to the ground and lay still. Nearly a minute passed until he spoke again. "Knux?"

"What?"

"Just tell me one thing. When you go treasure hunting, is it always like that?"

Knuckles smirked. "No. That must be the Sonic-curse."

"The Sonic-curse? What do I have to do with this?"

"Oh, it's just that wherever you go, you run into trouble. And if I'm with you, I'm in trouble too. Maybe the trouble follows you all the time."

Sonic grinned. "I highly doubt that. It would have to be very fast then. And this time it was you who encountered the trouble, not me."

Knuckles sighed. "Point." The echidna fell silent for a moment. "Oh, and Sonic? Our bag is gone. Fell into the pit."

The hedgehog groaned. "Great. Let me have a guess. The food and the water were IN the bag?"

"Hmm," Knuckles nodded.

Sonic lifted his head and looked at his forearm. "Let me get this straight. Our entire stuff except two stupid flashlights is lost, we are sitting in the middle of nowhere and where we are going, a group of insane enemies is waiting for us and we are searching for a thing we still don't know anything about?"

"Eh – yes." Knuckles nodded resigned and watched as the hedgehog sat up.

"At least I'm not dizzy any longer," Sonic noticed, monitoring himself. "But I got a few nice new bruises now. And some pretty scratches. At least _I_ look like a dangerous trip now." The hedgehog grinned.

Knuckles looked him up and down. "I would say you look like after a typical meeting with Robotnik and – hmm –" He regarded Sonic again. "- I would say … fifteen robots."

The hedgehog's grin broadened. "Twenty! Minimum!" Sonic laughed, but stopped quickly as he looked back at where they came from. "This was the second booby trap we fell for."

"Really? Maybe it was an accident." Knuckles shrugged.

Sonic shook his head. "No, wasn't. I saw a moment before I fell. There was a light, just as high as your head. I guess some kind of light barrier. And you triggered it when you stepped through."

Knuckles looked at Sonic disbelievingly. "You mean, there was a light sensor I activated? Why didn't you?"

Sonic gave a tiny smile. "I couldn't. I'm too small. I could simply walk under it, but you are a bit taller, only ten centimeters, sure, but it was enough to cut the light."

"And activate the trap." Knuckles stared at Sonic. "We have to be very careful if we don't want to fall for another one."

Sonic ran his fingers through the spikes on his head. "Whoever once owned this place we are heading for, they had a big need for security. And I thought we agreed that this first trap with the wind would have been enough to kill everybody who isn't as fast as I am. And since there is **no** one as fast as I am, nobody would ever get to this trap here."

Knuckles shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. But there has to be a way to avoid the traps. For the people who know them, I guess the way isn't dangerous. Perhaps the designers thought you could avoid one trap by chance."

Sonic quirked an eye ridge. "Maybe." He stood up. "I'm curious what comes next."

Knuckles stood up too and looked at Sonic, somehow not able to face asking if the hedgehog was serious and really wanted to see another trap. Maybe he was, Sonic had always had a weakness for everything you could break your neck with.

"You coming, Knuckles?", Sonic asked impatiently, as if he really couldn't wait to see another trap trying to kill him.

Knuckles sighed, wondering if this was Sonic's new favorite sentence, and followed the hedgehog.

* * *

"What the hell…?"

Knuckles' surprised shouting drew Sonic's attention and the hedgehog returned to where the echidna was standing, regarding the rock he stood in front of in open-mouthed astonishment.

Honestly Sonic had to admit that the place was worth being astonished about it. The narrow canyon had opened to a broader valley and the ground was nearly covered by about two meters high, black rocks of all kinds of forms. Some looking like pieces of modern art, some like pillars and some just indefinable weird. They formed a strange forest of rocks and the orange sunlight of the ending day intensified the effect by painting shadows on the stones.

But obviously the forms weren't the reason for Knuckles' surprise. It was the rock itself. Evidently Knuckles had tried climbing up one of them. The outcome of that attempt could be easily seen. It was a big hole.

Sonic snickered. "Geez, Knux. Nobody told you to smash the thing." He sharply regarded the echidna when Knuckles ignored his remark. "Knux? What's wrong?"

"This is no rock." Knuckles pointed at the hole.

Sonic raised his eyebrows. "You really had too much sun today…"

"Stop kidding Sonic! Look!" Knuckles still pointed at the rock excitedly, then snatched Sonic's wrist and put the hedgehog's hand on it.

Sonic stiffed, his fingers running over the material. He clenched his hand into a fist and knocked his knuckles on it. The presumed rock responded with a dull thud. "That's – wood?!"

Knuckles nodded when Sonic looked at him. "Right."

Sonic glanced around. "All of this?" Not waiting for any answer, the hedgehog started zipping around and knocking on all the 'rocks' he passed. After a while, he stopped. "Really. Wood."

"Just what is that place?", Knuckles wondered. " Was that a forest long ago?", he speculated looking around.

Sonic tilted his head. "Maybe. But it's kinda cool." The blue hedgehog looked around again. "You coming?"

Knuckles nodded and followed Sonic when the hedgehog walked along the small path that winded through the chaos of stone-looking wood.

It was ten minutes of walking later when Sonic's foot touched something on the ground. It gave way, disappearing into the ground.

Sonic quickly jumped away, Knuckles following on his heels. Both froze in shock and surprise when a flicker of light on the top of three high rock-things caught their eyes.

Said rocks were spearheaded by small white crystals, prism-shaped. The orange sunlight fell on them and suddenly was reflected into multiple beams of white light.

"Watch out!", Sonic yelped and leaped at Knuckles, flinging both of them to the floor. A thick beam of intense light barely missed them.

"What did you do, Sonic?!", Knuckles shouted alarmed when he staggered back to his feet.

"Nothing!" Sonic jumped up too.

"Of course you did. Suddenly lightening bolts are shooting at us!" Knuckles stepped closer to him, eyes blazing angrily. "You always have to be that careless! Can't you watch your step, hedgehog?!"

"Ah, I should watch me step, hey?", Sonic shouted back, now almost nose-to-nose with Knuckles. "Then remind me again who stepped on that trap some hours ago and started that wind?"

"No one could have been prepared for this!"

"No one could have been prepared for this one either!"

"It is still your fault!"

"Is not!"

"Of course it is! You…" Knuckles had been just about to lunge at Sonic, but something else caught his gaze, attracting his mind away from the argument. "SONIC!"

"WHAT?! Are you starting to try dodging this? Afraid of the confrontation?"

"SONIC! LOOK!"

Sonic turned around to where Knuckles was pointing. His eyes snapped all the way open. "Oh crap!"

The valley behind them was burning, seemingly sky-high flames licked on the wooden rock-things. Black smoke rose to the sky.

Sonic's eyes flashed around. They were surrounded completely by fire. Immediately the argument was forgotten again. "We have to get out of here!", Sonic shouted.

"That way!" Knuckles pointed and raced off, Sonic directly behind him.

The flames were covering almost every ounce of ground to stand on and the smoke was eating away the air to breathe. Knuckles grabbed Sonic's arm and pulled the hedgehog over to the nearest canyon wall. "Up here!"

Sonic nodded and grabbed hold of some holes and protruding stones in the wall, pulling himself up.

Knuckles was the one with the much bigger climbing skills and soon was several meters above the hedgehog. Trying to ignore his painful coughing, the red echidna heaved himself over a small edge and his eyes widened with surprise when he found himself on a small path winding up the rock. Knuckles turned. "Sonic! I found a way up!"

The only answer was a coughing fit from below. Knuckles leaned over the edge and spotted Sonic clinging to the stone halfway up, surrounded by smoke. Knuckles couldn't see much more of him than a shape, his own eyes were watering of the biting smoke.

"Oh great," the echidna muttered as he quickly climbed back down. His hand closed around one of Sonic's wrists. "Let go, Sonic."

The hedgehog coughed again before he mastered an answer. "Why?"

"You're going for a little flight." Knuckles swung him a few times to the left and right before letting go and Sonic hurtled up and over the edge above. Knuckles climbed back up, now really coughing hard himself.

When he reached the small path he'd found, Sonic was about to pick himself up. "How about a warning next time, Knucklehead?"

"Learn climbing until next time, hedgehog," Knuckles retorted.

Sonic gave a small grin. "Let's get outta here."

For once Knuckles couldn't disagree and the two of them jogged up the small, winding way and followed it until the smell of smoke was gone. Still coughing, they sank down onto the sand. The cool breeze up here provided them with wonderfully fresh air.

"Knux? --- You --- okay?", Sonic panted, barely getting the words out between hasty gulps for air.

"Fine," the echidna replied, as breathless as Sonic.

After a few minutes Sonic was the first one to sit again. He looked over at where they had come from. An orange flicker was glowing over the valley. "That was close."

"It sure was," Knuckles answered, sitting up too.

Sonic looked back at his friend. "Man, now I'm done."

Knuckles nodded. "Me too," he admitted, "It was a pretty long day."

"And a pretty exiting one too." A tiny grin lit Sonic's face.

"And I always thought nearly dying's part of the fun for you," Knuckles teased.

Sonic yawned, running a hand over his forehead to wipe off his sweat. "A bit. But this can really finish a guy off."

Knuckles frowned at the answer, not sure whether it was a joke or not, then shrugged it off and nodded. "I suggest we take a break here. The place is as good as every other. And both of us are tired."

The hedgehog flopped back full length on the sand in response. "Great idea."

Knuckles looked at the far away fire for a while, then also lay down. "Think we should take turns at keeping a watch or do you think it's safe enough here?"

Sonic didn't answer.

The echidna sat up again and looked at him. The blue hedgehog was snoring quietly, sprawled on the sandy floor. "I count that as 'no' for the watch." Knuckles lay back down and was asleep almost as soon as his eyes fell close.

* * *

Sonic awoke to the sounds of his own quills rattling against one another. Sleepily he noticed that he had curled into a tight ball in his sleep and that he was shivering with cold. The hedgehog unfurled himself and sat up, rubbing his arms. Cold was an understatement. It was _freezing_. The sky above was a bright firmament of stars, it was barely midnight.

Aside of him, Knuckles was lying, shivering as much as Sonic himself, but still asleep. Sonic reached over and shook him. "Knuckles! Wake up!"

"What…? Sonic?", Knuckles mumbled as he started awaking, blinking at the hedgehog. "What's up?"

"We can't stay here. We'll freeze to death."

Knuckles sat up, finally noticing his shivering. "Geez, it's cold here!"

"Great that you got it figured." Sonic stood up, bouncing on the balls of his feet to get warm.

Knuckles climbed to his feet too, stretching his stiff limbs. "Deserts are always hot at daytime and cold in the nights."

"That's pretty stupid. And all of our supplies except two damn flashlights went lost," Sonic cursed, finally starting to get fully awake.

Knuckles watched Sonic hopping. "You're right. We cannot possibly stay here. We'd be both running the risk of getting hypothermia or something."

Sonic nodded. "We better move."

"I suggest we go now and take a break later in the morning when it's warmer." Knuckles started walking.

Sonic quickly followed him. "Sounds like the only thing we can do." He yawned again, but the cold did a good job of defeating tiredness.

A few minutes they were walking in silence. The moon dowsed the landscape in silvery light. It could very well have been a pretty view, but all Sonic noticed was the freezing cold, the dryness in his mouth and the huge and painfully empty black hole that sat just there where his stomach ought to be.

Frustrated, the hedgehog kicked into the sand. "Damn desert."

Knuckles looked at him, the dim moonlight hiding the abashed look on the echidna's face. But Sonic stared down on his toes anyway.

"Are you …" Knuckles cleared his throat. "Are you mad at me?"

"Mad at you?", Sonic echoed, somehow confused by the question. "Why?"

"Because I – I tracked you into this. It is my fault that you are in that – damn desert now." Knuckles paused and sighed, but somehow was glad that he had gotten it out. He felt like he had to say sorry to Sonic since that explosion in front of the hangar.

"Hm," Sonic muttered.

Knuckles continued. "This is none of your business. All of this. It is mine. It was _me_ who promised that old man to find his treasure and secure it for him, not you. _You_ helped _me_ out. And as a thank you, I get you into some crap that nearly kills you several times. So far…"

Sonic lifted his eyes from the ground to Knuckles when the echidna went on talking.

"I know, I always say you are the one attracting the trouble and getting himself and others into danger, but that's not true. At least not entirely. This time it was me. _I_ am the one who's got a promise to keep. Not you. And therefore _I_ should be the one in the line of fire, _I_ should be the one these turtles try to blow to death."

Seeing how Sonic itched to say something, Knuckles threw him a glance that rendered the hedgehog silent.

"Maybe you don't understand, Sonic. You always get into danger, and I guess you like this. Alright for you. But it's not for me. I'm a guardian, and as such, I'm supposed to always act in an honorable way. Guardians don't bother others with their problems and get others into their wars." Knuckles sighed. "All I ought to do is making sure the Emerald is safe. And since I do things beyond my rightful task, I should do it without endangering others. _I_ should keep my promise and deal with the enemies and other threats that result of it, not someone else. This is not right."

Knuckles finally fell silent, somewhat embarrassed about himself having said so much. And so many things he normally didn't even hint at.

Sonic watched the echidna. Knuckles was certainly no talkative character and Sonic had rarely heard him talk that much at once. Somehow he didn't know what to say to this. Maybe Knuckles was right and Sonic really didn't understand his problems, brought up by a very special sense of honor the red echidna had.

"Knuckles," the hedgehog started hesitantly.

The echidna looked back up at him, without showing any readable expression.

"I don't think you tracked me into this," Sonic started again, "I _chose_ to come with you. Okay, I didn't choose being nearly killed a few times, but that is something none of us could discern. It just happened." Sonic paused a moment. "I decided to help you getting through this crazy puzzle. Of course I didn't know what would happen then, and you didn't either. I guess the events came crashing down on all of us. But that's okay, it's not your fault and it's not mine."

Sonic stopped walking, forcing Knuckles to do the same and meet his eyes.

"No," the hedgehog said," I'm _not_ mad at you. I decided to join you and help keeping that promise you made. Out of my own will. Nobody forced me into this. Neither you, nor these diamond-freaks, nor fate, nor anything else. I chose to help a _friend_. _You_."

Sonic pointed his index finger at Knuckles' chest when he continued.

"And I think this is very much right. It's right to help a friend, no matter what that might end up as in the end. I _like_ helping you. And as long as in the end of this, you kept your promise, we kicked these turtles in their crazed butts, and we can sit at home somewhere, have some nice lunch and everything is how it ought to be again, I'm completely fine with this." Sonic took a deep breath and regarded Knuckles.

The red echidna was staring at him, clearly not having expected such a long answer. "You really don't…", he started.

Sonic shook his head. "No. I meant what I said. Every. Single. Word." The hedgehog looked into Knuckles' face, and for a blink of an eye spotted a spark of confusion in his violet eyes. "Geez, Knuckles, someone ever told you that you got a lot to learn about what being friends with someone means?"

Knuckles stared at the blue hedgehog, hesitating, not quite sure if he knew what Sonic wanted him to say, know or do, then he wearily shook his head.

Sonic smiled almost softly. "Sorry, but you gotta figure that out by yourself. Maybe, when you got some time – later – when you sit on your island, staring at this big rock of yours, you can think about what I said. Not only now. And about what Tails said too." Sonic regarded Knuckles with a small frown. "Perhaps you'll get behind it."

The echidna folded his arms on his chest. "I'm not stupid."

Sonic grinned. "Never said so. Let's just say sometimes a bit slow."

Knuckles grunted, throwing a side-glance at Sonic that forced the hedgehog to brace himself for a punch, but then Knuckles suddenly smiled instead. "And it's not a 'big rock'!"

"Whatever you say, Knux," Sonic laughed, then he looked at his red friend. "Why did you think I was mad at you?"

"You were so, I don't know, short, kicking the ground and so on, and normally you are just when you're angry with someone," Knuckles explained.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to blame you for anything." Sonic gave a small smile. "I guess I'm just cold, tired, thirsty and very, very hungry. Not exactly the best starters for a good mood."

Knuckles nodded.

For a few minutes the two were walking in silence again, then an almost whispered word of Knuckles broke it. "Thanks."

Sonic looked up at him and grinned casually. "What for?"

Knuckles smiled, then frowned when Sonic palmed over his belly with a groan. "What's wrong?"

Sonic grimaced. "I shouldn't have said anything about food. Was a jinx I guess."

The echidna threw him a pitying look. He was hungry too, but not as bad as Sonic. Certainly the hyperspeedy hedgehog had burned more energy than normal persons needed to survive one day in the few minutes he had been running in this wind trap.

But as a bigger problem than the lack of food Knuckles regarded the lack of water. If they wouldn't find some source of water tomorrow they would have to add heat exhaustion and dehydration to their list of worries. And this list already contained freaked enemies, traps and the fact that they still had a very limited idea of what was going on here anyway.

* * *

"Cool," Sonic commented the view, and Knuckles had to admit that was a fitting term.

It was only one hour after sunrise and not too hot yet. They were standing once again on a cliff and beneath them the ground fell to the biggest basin both of them had ever seen. The walls were several hundreds of meters high and they couldn't see the end of the valley.

"Is that a meteor crater?", Sonic asked.

"Don't think so. Looks more as if the basin had been washed out of the rock around. By erosion over millions of years." Knuckles' eyes followed the rock surrounding the gigantic hole to where they lost sight of it at the horizon. "If it would be filled with water, that'd be a pretty big lake."

"More like a sea," Sonic nodded. "So, you say that's the desert of lake? Then I suggest we go down there and find these freaks and their globe thing."

Knuckles nodded and wanted to answer, when Sonic stepped forwards to the very edge and let himself kip over it. Knuckles quickly leaned to see what he was doing and spotted the hedgehog running down the wall. Knuckles shook his head. "One day that reckless idiot is going to kill himself." The echidna leaped off the cliff and into a glide downwards to the plain at the bottom of the rock.

When Knuckles reached the ground, he found Sonic standing on a small plastered path, tapping a foot. Knuckles walked past him and followed the path.

* * *

They covered the plain quickly and reached the nearest group of big rocks. The tiny path they had been walking on all the time was clearly recognizable, winding from one heap of huge stones to the next. Sonic was about to follow it, when Knuckles grabbed his arm.

"What's up?". Sonic wondered.

Knuckles sniffed. "Do you smell that?" The echidna stepped off the path and closer to the next rocks.

Sonic sniffed himself, frowned and quirked his eye ridges at Knuckles. "What am I supposed to smell?"

The red echidna closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then turned to Sonic. "Water."

Sonic sniffed once again without finding anything beyond heated sand and their own sweat. Honestly, he had no idea if, and when, how, water smelled. Doubtfully he regarded Knuckles, somehow wondering if the sun was starting to get to him. "Water smells?"

Knuckles nodded. "It does." The echidna had been living outside his entire life and he knew how to trust his instincts. He reached for one of the meters high rocks and climbed up. Jumping from rock to rock, he found a small round square in between the biggest boulders, filled with sand. And at one side of this sandy place, a gap between the rocks drew his attention. Knuckles reached in, stiffed and a smile lit his face. "Sonic!"

Hearing him call, Sonic somersaulted up to the rocks as well and zipped to Knuckles' side. "What?"

Instead of an answer, the echidna pulled his hand out of the small gap. His glove was drenched and as he shook it at Sonic, small droplets of cool water flew at the hedgehog.

It was one of the rare moments in his life Sonic didn't mind getting wet. Quite the opposite. A broad grin spread over his face. "Knux, your nose is amazing!"

Knuckles had yet reached into the gap again, filling his opened hands with water of the tiny spring, then stepped aside and drank, allowing Sonic to get himself some water too.

In the next minutes they took turns at filling their hands and drinking, both glad to quench the thirst of one day in the hot desert without water, and it felt so good and relieving that for a moment they forgot about the stress of the last days and about what might come later.

Sonic splashed some of the water into his face, still grinning, then looked around. The high rocks around saved the place from any view inside and their shadows kept the worst heat out. "Um, Knux? You said something about taking a break?"

Knuckles nodded. "I guess we won't find any better place. It is hot and it is dusty, but … okay. But we can't risk sleeping again without keeping a watch. We must have gotten damn close to the goal, what means also damn close to the enemies."

Sonic nodded back at him. "How about two hours for each of us and the other one stays on guard? And then we take off again?"

"Sounds good. You first."

"Why me?" Sonic raised his eyebrows.

"Why not?" Knuckles tilted his head. "We need some reason to say who's first, don't we? We can say you because you have sharp quills, or me because I can glide. It's all the same. But if we stand here discussing, that's just stupid."

Sonic shrugged it off and knuckled under. "Fine. Whatever you say. And I have to admit, I can really go for a nap now." He smiled briefly, then stretched out where he was, on the soft sand in the shadow of a rock twice as tall as he was himself. Then Sonic watched how Knuckles climbed up to a gap in one of the rocks from where he could overlook the area around and spot possibly nearing enemies. After throwing a last glance at the echidna, Sonic allowed his tiredness to take over and within a few draws of breath, he doze off.

Knuckles looked over at the sleeping hedgehog. It was one of the rare moments he was suddenly aware of the small thing that had grown between them over the years they knew each other, slowly and unconsciously. Trust. That was what it could be described best as. It was the way Sonic could drop off here in this hostile place, trusting Knuckles to guard his sleep. It was what Knuckles had felt when Sonic had pulled him through that deadly wind, determined to break Knuckles' wrist and his own fingers instead of letting go, and what had been in Sonic's eyes when Knuckles had pulled him up the cliff. It was always there, even when they argued or fought. But it was so highly subconscious that Knuckles rarely thought about it, and he didn't know if Sonic ever did. The hedgehog was no thinker anyway, he was more the spontaneous character. The one who had done something before thinking about it. Maybe he was too fast for thinking.

Knuckles leaned back against the rock, allowing his body to relax a bit while his eyes were looking somehow in every direction at the same time. He was a guardian and keeping a watch was what he was best at.

The two hours passed without anything happening, no enemy came out suddenly, not even Sonic stirred in his sleep. Only his slow breathing showed that the hedgehog wasn't a blue spiked sculpture but a living being. Somewhat feeling sorry for his friend, Knuckles slid down from his post, knelt down and shook Sonic's shoulders. It needed a few rather hard shakes until the hedgehog blinked. "Only five more minutes…", he mumbled drowsily.

"Sonic!" Knuckles shook him again, but a little softer this time. "Sorry, it was you who said two hours."

"Damn me…" Sonic sat up, then crawled to his feet to get some of the cool water. The hedgehog splashed a few handfuls into his face, then turned around to Knuckles again, running one hand through his wet spikes and fur. "Okay, never take serious what half asleep hedgehogs say."

Knuckles grinned. "Awake now?"

Sonic nodded. "Your turn." He pointed up to where Knuckles had been sitting. "Good spot to look around?"

"Hmm," Knuckles nodded back, making himself more or less comfortable on the dry subsoil.

Sonic jumped up to lean against the rock, lazily shifting against it and crossing his hands in his neck. When he looked down to Knuckles only a few minutes later, the echidna was as sound asleep as Sonic himself had been.

The desert sun was rising quickly and Sonic passed his watch with looking at the air sizzling with heat all around their small resting place. It was midday when the two hours were over and Sonic moved to wake Knuckles, who proved to be as little pleased by the wake-up-call as Sonic had been.

They drank thoroughly again, not knowing when they would find water the next time, then took off.

* * *

It was a dead end. The path ended in front of a wall painted with some kind of strange picture. In the middle of it, a lettering repeated the puzzle poem that had led them here.

"Did we miss some other way?" Sonic looked around.

Knuckles shook his head. "How could we? We couldn't go anywhere else."

"And there we have your stupid poem again." Sonic gestured at the wall.

Knuckles read it again, although he knew it by heart. _In black on green, Sayhutao's heart beat is blowing. Fire meets rock and the path will open to the place of power._

"And it still doesn't make sense to me," Sonic went on complaining.

Knuckles frowned. "It doesn't? We had black and green as the entrance to the canyon that led us here, we had the wind and the fire and the rocks. It does make sense."

"You think this was a guide through the traps?"

"More a description of the way here. Although we didn't get the hint."

"Hm." Sonic rubbed his nose. "Fine. Then, what do we do with the numbers? Maybe they're unimportant, they didn't mind writing them on this wall."

"_Ten change to six and nine_," Knuckles quoted from his memory. "He said they're very important and I had to make sure I wouldn't forget them." For a moment the echidna looked at the wall, then turned to Sonic. "You remember how long we were searching for the way on after this wind tunnel? Maybe we'd have to count our steps or something." Knuckles shrugged, not really beliving that himself.

Sonic quirked an eye ridge. "Sounds weird if you ask me. But we are still standing here and the door is locked, isn't it?"

"Door? Nice idea. We just need a key."

"I don't see a keyhole, Knucklehead, do you? Or maybe we need to say something." Sonic stepped close to the wall and opened both arms. "Open sesame!" Nothing happened. Sonic pulled a face. "Doesn't work, you see?"

Knuckles shook his head. "Not like that." He looked around, then stepped towards a part of the painting that showed a white circle. Without expecting anything to happen, he ran his fingers over it and winced in surprise when it gave way and disappeared into the wall with a stony scraping.

Sonic reflexively leaped backwards when a part of the wall itself started moving and opened to a cave behind. "Hey, how'd you do that?"

Knuckles shrugged, allowing himself a tiny smile. "Experience."


	8. Lion's Den

**Lion's Den**

Sonic's flashlight moved over the rocky walls and ceiling of the cave. They were in it for nearly ten minutes now. So far nothing had happened. But it did very soon.

Knuckles' lamp locked on a spot in front of them. "There! Think we can catch him?!"

"Shouldn't be too difficult," Sonic gave back. "Then we can ask him what's going on here!"

The person they were talking about had suddenly appeared on the path in front of them, about three hundred meters away. A lone turtle. And he stood there as if they could do him absolutely no harm.

Knuckles hurried along the small way, Sonic directly behind him. But suddenly the echidna stopped, eying the enemy suspiciously. Somehow this was one of these kinds of situations that made every instinct Knuckles had wave red alarm flags at him. Why was that guy so calm? He was alone and they were two. And he couldn't expect them to be here, could he? Something definitively wasn't right…

Sonic cursed when he crashed in the echidna's back, causing both of them to nearly fall. "Hell, Knux!", Sonic shouted when he struggled to stay on his feet. "What's up? You can't just simply stop in the middle of the way!"

"Sonic, something's not right!"

"You are very correct that something's not right!", the turtle suddenly spoke. "You are here. But now, you'll rot in the underworld where's no way out ever again!"

Sonic and Knuckles exchanged a confused glance. What did he mean?

The answer to that particular question became obvious when the foe stepped to the wall he had been leaning against and laid his hands on a lever. As the turtle pulled, the presumed safe rock Sonic and Knuckles were standing on suddenly disappeared and a hole opened.

With a yelp of shock, Sonic reflexively tried grabbing the edge of the hole, three of the fingers of his left hand snatched rocky material, but gravity and the momentum of the sudden fall jolted hard on Sonic's shoulder, flashing incredible pain through it. With another yelp, but this time a pained one, Sonic's fingers lost their hold and the hedgehog fell into a seemingly groundless darkness.

Evidently Knuckles was luckier than Sonic was, the hedgehog saw that the echidna had somehow managed to drive his spikes into the wall, but Sonic had no time to envy his friend for his safe position. The fall ended abruptly on a very hard surface. Groaning, Sonic rolled to his side and clutched his shoulder, not able to help a painful whimpering.

Something laded aside of him with a small thump, then hasty footsteps padded over to him. "Sonic! Are you hurt?", Knuckles asked worried at the sounds of obvious distress, kneeling down aside of Sonic, the light of his flashlight casting over the hedgehog's body. Noticing how Sonic was holding his shoulder, the echidna gently grabbed Sonic's hand and pulled it away. "Let me see."

Sonic moaned when Knuckles touched him.

"Oh great. You dislocated your shoulder," the echidna told him.

"Can you fix it?", Sonic pressed through teeth gritted against the pain.

Knuckles hesitated. "Maybe I can, but… This is likely to hurt you great deal…"

"Does anyway," Sonic gave back hoarsely.

"I guess we have no choice," Knuckles said frowning. His hand closed around Sonic's upper arm, then he put the second under the hedgehog's armpit. "At least I think that will be short," he muttered reassuringly at Sonic.

The blue hedgehog didn't answer. He braced himself for what was certainly now to come. But there was no way in hell he could have been prepared for what came.

Knuckles quickly pulled his hand away when the plopping jolt told him that it had worked. Sonic's scream slowly died out. Knuckles looked down on him. "Okay, err... I guess you rest a moment and I'll see if I can find a way out, fine?" Sonic just gasped and didn't answer. Knuckles shrugged and stood back up.

The echidna shot a glance upwards. The hole in the ground they had fallen through had closed again. No way that could be used as an exit. Knuckles moved his flashlight over the surroundings. A tunnel, nearly round shaped, obviously not of natural origin. He was standing at the end of it, but to the left it seemed to move long way into the rock, longer than the light of his small lamp could reach, it faded into blackness without hitting a wall. Maybe that could lead to a way out. Although it was unlikely that it would be easy to get out. It was a trap and nobody built traps out of which it was easy to escape. That would be stupid, wouldn't it?

Knuckles started following the tunnel. The walk was stopped only two minutes later, when it ended at a wall. "Oh great," Knuckles muttered and examined the blockade in front of him, until he found a small hole in it near to the ground. He crouched down and looked inside. It wasn't a passage. It looked much more like a natural part of a cave. Knuckles' light was stopped by a wall only two meters inside, but it maybe led further. Knuckles tilted his head. He could squeeze through, what meant Sonic could too. After a short hesitation Knuckles decided to crawl into the small tunnel alone to make sensible use of the time. Maybe he would find a way out of the trouble they had – once again – managed to get themselves into.

* * *

After a while the feeling of muscles and sinews being pulled much farther than they had been designed for receded and Sonic sat up and leaned with his back against the wall. He switched off the flashlight to spare the batteries, then he just sat there, staring into blackness, carefully massaging his shoulder.

Sonic had no idea how long he had been sitting, one lost the track of time easily when being completely in the dark and hearing nothing. But then he glimpsed a small hint of light that soon grew to reveal Knuckles and his flashlight. "Hey Sonic. Are you okay?"

Sonic nodded. "I think so."

"You can move you shoulder alright?"

Sonic nodded again, standing up. "It hurts, but I guess it'll be okay. Thanks."

"No problem."

Sonic pointed past the echidna. "Where've you been?"

"I was searching for a way out of here."

"And?", Sonic asked impatiently, "Did you find one?"

Knuckles tilted his head. "I'm not sure. This small tunnel has a dead end, but behind the rock you can hear the rushing sound of water. I think we could break through. I didn't try, first wanted to get you." Knuckles paused a moment. "Is your lamp broken?"

"No," Sonic shook his head, "just didn't want to use off all the batteries. There was nothing to see anyway."

"Think we should try getting outta here now?"

Sonic nodded, turning on his own light. "Great idea. Lead the way."

Knuckles led him to the end of the room and climbed back into the small tunnel. Sonic followed quickly, belly crawling after the echidna. The small cave was winding through the rock, sometimes that narrow that Sonic and Knuckles could barely squeeze through. After about six or seven minutes, the two friends stopped crawling. The cave was big enough to sit in here.

Sonic's ears twitched at the sounds. A sound he personally didn't like. It really was rushing of water, and as it seemed, it was a lot of it. The hedgehog looked at Knuckles. "I was playing with the idea of using a spin through it, but… It sounds very much like if I will fall into a river when I smash through."

Knuckles nodded. "No need for that. And you should go easy on your shoulder. Leave that to me."

Sonic robbed back a bit to give Knuckles some free space, then watched as the echidna lifted a fisted hand and punched at the wall. There was a loud noise and a cloud of dust swallowed the echidna.

"Knuckles?", Sonic coughed, waving his hand in front of his face to clear the air.

"Hey Sonic! Look at that!", Knuckles called excitedly from somewhere beneath him.

Sonic crawled forwards and peered out of the hole Knuckles' blow had left. About two meters below, Knuckles was sitting on the floor, staring openly at the room around. Sonic's eyes followed the trail of Knuckles' light and said eyes opened widely when he gazed at the room around.

The hedgehog pulled himself out of the small tunnel and jumped down to Knuckles. The echidna was still sitting there, somehow stunned by the view.

It was a cave, in fact, it was the biggest cave Sonic had ever seen. They could barely see the other side of it. Right in the middle of the natural tunnel, a broad river was rushing over rock and gurgling around stalagmites. They were in a stalactite cave, long pillars of chalk-stone grew from floor to ceiling, sometimes only half the way, then they looked like long spikes sticking out of the rock. Some of the rock showed shapes reminding of people or sculptures.

"Wow!" Sonic whistled through his teeth. "That's pretty cool."

_"Cool-ool-ool-ool,_" answered the echo.

Sonic grinned. "Yep. That _really_ is cool."

Knuckles stood up and susted himself off. He nodded. "It sure is," he admitted and looked around. "You know, every one of these stalactites is thousands of years old."

"Really?" Sonic quirked an eye ridge, surprised regarding the stones.

Knuckles nodded. "A stalactite grows only one millimeter in fifty years or so."

"And since these are meters long… Wow…" The hedgehog looked at all the pillars of stone. "This place must be millions of years old!"

"I think so. The cave was dug into the mountain by the forces of water from that subterranean river. Water mostly comes out of rock. But normally, it gets to the surface somewhere."

Sonic tilted his head. "So, which direction do we take?"

"Downwards," Knuckles decided the matter. It was all the same which way they took, they knew none of them anyway.

So the two started walking along the riverbed. Sonic switched his flashlight off again, the shine of Knuckles' lamp was enough for them to be able to safely walk in the big cave.

* * *

"Just where the hell is it going?" Sonic stared openly at the river.

Knuckles at his side could do nothing but shrug.

They were still inside the stalactite cave. In fact, they had been in here for hours. The two of them had been already getting scared there was no way out like the turtle had said.

What was rendering both of them speechless, admittedly Knuckles rather more than Sonic, was not their seemingly hopeless imprisonment, but what the river was doing.

It simply vanished. Not into the ground. In thin air.

They had been following its flow and come to a place where the riverbed ended at a cliff and expected the water would come down in a waterfall. What actually happened to it for about a meter.

The water fell down the cliff, but never reached the ground below. It was swallowed up by a white glow hovering in mid-air. There was no source for the light to be spotted.

Sonic stepped closer to the mysterious phenomenon, as close as he could without falling down the rock he was standing on. "What is that?", he demanded. Again. Then the hedgehog lay down on the rock to stretch his hand out at whatever that glowing stuff might be.

"No! Sonic, don't touch it!", Knuckles yelped, pulled out of his stun by Sonic's recklessness.

The hedgehog retracted his hand, turning around over his shoulder, still lying on his belly. "So, you can still talk, can't you?", he teased with a grin. "I was starting to think you lost your voice somewhere back there, Knux."

Knuckles growled. "Do you actually try getting yourself killed or is it just the usual ignorance of dangers?"

"Huh?"

"You weren't really intending to _touch_ that, were you, Sonic?" Knuckles gestured at the glow.

"Do you know another way to figure out what it is?"

"Do we _have_ to figure out what it is? At least that badly that we can risk getting your hand ripped off or something?"

Sonic frowned, glancing over at the glow, at his hand, then back at Knuckles. He jumped back to his feet. "Are you serious? You're sounding outright worried about me."

Knuckles rolled his eyes in response, the question one of this kind he wouldn't answer.

"It could be a way out," Sonic stated, returning his gaze to the mysterious glow.

"Yeah, it could as well be a way to hell or outer space or a room filled to bursting point with water." Knuckles folded his arms on his chest. "The water needs to go somewhere and it's very likely that there's more of it."

Sonic winced at the thoughts of much water in one place and took an equally unconscious and involuntary step backwards.

Knuckles grinned, not pressing the topic any further. He knew about Sonic and the problem the hedgehog got with water. Instead, the echidna pointed downwards. "Let's see where that tunnel goes."

Sonic nodded, glad to have the topic changed and started jumping down the rocks. Down at the bottom, he stopped, tapping his foot on the floor in the typical pose of impatient waiting. "What's taking you so long?"

Knuckles groaned and shook his head.

Underneath the waterfall with the glow, the cave was dry and formed a nearly round room. A room that had clearly been visited by intelligent live before. The walls were painted with letters and pictures and some of the rocks formed benches and tables.

Sonic waved his flashlight around. "Cool." And it seemed they didn't need the flashlights to see well in here, the cave was filled by a soft light from the ceiling, although Sonic couldn't spot a lamp.

Knuckles stepped closer to the wall and started reading the texts. He gasped. "Sonic!"

The hedgehog whirled around from where he'd been climbing on a table to examine the presumed decoration on the ceiling and find out where the light came from, admittedly without any success. "What?"

"Get down off other people's tables and do something sensible. This is interesting here."

Sonic faked a yawn. "Yeah. Utterly interesting. Teeeexts." The way the hedgehog stretched the word showed just how much he was interested in reading right now. Instead of joining the echidna, he lay down on the table, lazily whipping his left foot on his right knee and resting his head on his hands.

Knuckles groaned, then decided to tell the hedgehog anyway. He was sure it would catch his attention. "The diamond globe holds the power of water," he read out aloud, "When ten comes to ten, the desert of lake will be the lake and the forests the desert or the lake will be drained of water for centuries, but when six and nine unite, the water will consume the diamonds power forever."

Sonic shot up from his table and zipped to Knuckles' side. "What?"

"Read yourself." Knuckles smirked.

Sonic did. Frowning, he turned to Knuckles. "There we got these stupid numbers again. What's that supposed to tell me?"

Knuckles shrugged. "As far as I understand this, when ten comes to ten, the diamond globe's power can be used to make the desert a lake or the other way around. Like we guessed earlier." The echidna paused a moment. "And when six comes to nine, the diamond will destroy itself."

Sonic raised his eyebrows. "It will?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I'm just guessing. I don't know more than you do."

Sonic tilted his head, looking up to the ceiling for a moment as if that could order his thoughts. "What's that fuss with the numbers? What means ten comes to ten and so on? How can a number come anywhere? Or to another one?"

Knuckles shrugged again. "No idea. But maybe we'll figure that one out."

Sonic rubbed his spiky head. "Hm."

* * *

When they continued to walk along the new tunnel, they could both switch out their flashlight. The ceiling itself was glowing and providing all the rooms with a constant light. Not very bright, but enough to see where you were going.

The walk stopped again only a few minutes later. Sonic regarded the walls at their sides with interested curiosity and not a small bit of fascination. From both left and right, more tunnels were intercepting the one they were in. But you couldn't go inside them, the entrances were locked up by the same weird white glow that they had seen at the waterfall. Standing close to it, the two friends could hear the small sounds of water.

"There are more rivers," Sonic noticed, not entirely liking the idea.

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah, I really wonder what that white glow is. Maybe the power of this diamond globe. It has to do something. And we guessed that it has something to do with water even before that writings back there said so."

"Maybe it's a teleporter thing. And the water that vanishes here comes out elsewhere." Sonic scratched his chin.

"Possible. Or it is –"

"It is none of your concern what it is," a bellowing voice interrupted the echidna.

Sonic and Knuckles whirled around. While they had been busily occupied by regarding the glow, six 'Servers' had appeared behind them. Four of them had bows and the tips of their arrows were pointing at the hedgehog and the echidna.

"Intruders! You are laying eyes upon secrets that are hundreds of years old." The turtle who had been speaking before eyed Knuckles and the echidna did his very best not to look away. "It was enough that you were told the secrets of the way here, to the place containing the core of the sacred knowledge. But now, you and your friend came here."

"I was asked to come here and I promised I'd do it," Knuckles started.

"I'm not interested in why you came!"

"Hey, chill out. Can't we just behave all a little sensible and try talking about it?", Sonic suggested.

"You won't talk here." A sly grin crossed the turtle's face.

Knuckles threw Sonic a glance. "Now."

Sonic spun to the right, leaping at the nearest guy with a weapon, Knuckles trying to push beside him. There was a short shouting neither Sonic nor Knuckles understood and the attacked 'Servers' suddenly jumped out of the way.

Something hard hit Sonic's left side. The hedgehog reached for it, pulling out a small arrow. His side was getting numb and his head started spinning.

"Sonic … ru…n…", Knuckles breathed, then Sonic saw him collapsing aside of him.

Sonic's own knees suddenly gave way and the hedgehog half fell. They had shot them with … this arrow … what the hell had been in it? … Poison? … _Are we dying?_ …

Sonic collapsed completely, barely noticing the pain when his head hit the ground. He saw the feet of the enemies stepping closer, someone grabbed his ankles and pulled him along the floor, then the world around blurred into nothingness.


	9. Captured

_Speedy's note: All charcaters in this chapter and the rest of the story are fictitious__, as is the religion the antagonists follow. Any similarities to real-life fanatics are intentional, but as intentionally exaggerated and **not** aimed at any religious people unless they consider themselves insane fanatics. May all religious or non-religious readers get some fun out of the fictitious insanity here. ,-)  
(C) for the turtle freaks and the diamond globe is mine!_

* * *

**Captured**

Sonic felt like if he was floating weightlessly through thick darkness, hovering somewhere between waking and still being passed out, but seemingly unable to get any closer to one of these. Sluggishly hints of memory came back to him and the hedgehog struggled to get enough control over his dull senses to find out where he was and what was going on.

As it seemed, he wasn't dead. It was cold and there was something hard underneath him. Slowly Sonic started regaining feeling and noticed that his left side - a big contrast to the aching and stiff rest of his body - still felt slightly numb. His head and stomach had obviously come to the nice agreement to provide him with the constant and highly sickening feeling of being on an over-spinning carousel. His injured left shoulder right now felt as if it was pulled in an angle that certainly wasn't good for it.

With a low groan, Sonic tried shifting his weight and bringing his arm into a more comfortable position, but found that he couldn't. Both of his arms were tied together on his belly.

Belatedly hit by the feeling of alarm, Sonic finally managed to open his eyes. The world was spinning around him and too blurry to make out anything more than faint shapes in the dim light. Only one meter away from him, the outlines of a red lump were melting into the image of the grey mist that _had _to be the floor.

"Knuckles?", the hedgehog mumbled.

"Sonic?", Knuckles croaked, "Where are you?"

"Dunno. Here I guess."

"Where's here?..."

"Uh…" Sonic shut his eyes again. If Knuckles felt as awful as he did, this conversation was highly unlikely to lead to any intelligent result.

It needed nearly ten minutes until Sonic felt enough like himself to try opening his eyes again. The outcome of this experiment was in so far assuring that this time he could see clearly and the room didn't spin around him. Even the nausea was abating slowly.

Sonic used his regained abilities immediately and looked around. They were in a small room with no window, enlightened by a torch on one of the walls and this freakily glowing ceiling. Sonic scooted to the nearest wall and propped himself against it to sit upright, what proved to be not little difficult. Apart from his hands, also his feet were tied.

Movement caught Sonic's eyes and he watched Knuckles sitting up. The echidna was tied as Sonic was - or almost as Sonic. While Sonic's arms had been tied on his front, Knuckles' were knotted on his back. Obviously their enemies had come to the conclusion that a hedgehog's back wasn't a safe place to restrain his hands with ropes.

"You okay, Sonic?", the echidna asked.

Sonic nodded. "Apart from some dizziness and the fact that I'm locked in a small room and a bit unnerved by that, I'm fine."

"Can you get your bonds open?"

Sonic shook his head. "Sorry to disappoint you. I can't even move my fingers."

Knuckles sighed. "Same with me."

"What do you think they will do to us now?" Sonic didn't even try to hide his nervousness.

"Don't know. And I don't want to." Knuckles looked over at the hedgehog. "Something nasty."

Sonic opened his mouth to answer in spite of having no idea what to say, when the door scraped open. Four turtles entered. One of them stepped in front of the two bonded prisoners. "You will now be brought in front of the Emperor. Await your judgment." He made a wink and two of the others knelt down one aside of Sonic and Knuckles, untying their feet. Then they pulled the hedgehog and the echidna up. "Don't try running away. We know this place better than you and with tied hands you wouldn't get far."

Sonic secretly stretched his legs when he was shoved to the door, decided that he would try running if there was a chance anyway.

They were led through several long tunnels until they entered a chamber. A turtle in a white cape was sitting on some kind of throne. Sonic and Knuckles were pushed into the room and in front of the throne, then their guards left their sides to sit down aside of the other four 'Servers' on a tread behind the throne.

The 'Emperor' leaned forwards on his throne and regarded the two prisoners. "Welcome," he began, his deep voice completely calm and emotionless. "I've already seen you, echidna, but your friend here not." He focused on Sonic and the hedgehog noticed that he had only one eye, the right one was covered by a nasty scar and a dark hole was staring at Sonic. "You caused me a lot of trouble, little hedgehog. You must understand, I was not little confused when I heard of my inferiors that they had been attacked by an evil spirit of Sayhutao. But now that I see you, I can sort of understand them. But of course you are not. You are nothing like a small hedgehog with an extraordinary color."

Sonic looked up at him, meeting his stabbing gaze. "I'm more than you think I am. I'm Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog. And I'll show you what I can do. Bet on it."

The Emperor snickered oddly. "Well, at least you have some bravery, hedgehog. But it won't last for long." The turtle sat back upright, glancing down on Sonic and Knuckles. "You have broken our law. You are inside a secret that is not to be told to anyone apart of this circle of selected Servers."

While the turtle was speaking, Sonic took a tiny step towards Knuckles, turning his back to the echidna, hoping he would get the hint. And to Sonic's relief, Knuckles understood immediately, he turned his back slightly to Sonic, as if he wanted to regard the paintings on the walls aside of him.

"Who build that place?", Sonic asked when the Emperor stopped to distract him from Knuckles rubbing the ropes on his wrists against Sonic's spikes.

"Our ancestors, hundreds of years ago, as the temple to hold the powers of the sacred diamond globe," the turtle answered. "But they were fools, they had no idea of the power they were possessing! They could have ruled the continent. Instead, they decided to seal the diamond's power here to keep it a secret." He paused and looked at Sonic, once again locking his ugly eyes with the hedgehog's. "But the time of idiots is over. The weak leaders of our tribe got what they deserved, they vanished in oblivion. But we, we are left and we are here now. Finally, we will harness a power our guild was founded to control." He laughed.

"What do you want to do with this globe", Sonic demanded, half out of curiosity, half to cover Knuckles' attempts to free his hands.

"The diamond controls the highest powers of the gods. We will be able to let the water appear and vanish wherever we want and whenever we want." The 'Emperor' giggled. "And then everybody will understand that our way is the only correct one. Everybody will have to follow us!"

"Follow you? Just because you got some kind of tool that makes the water flow in another direction? Don't you think that is a little … overestimated?" Sonic tilted his head.

The turtle laughed. "Oh, little hedgehog, you are naïve and stupid. Of course they will follow my rule, all of the people living on this continent then depend on my mercy."

Sonic frowned. This weirdo wanted to rule over others, like Eggman. And from the first day of knowing Robotnik on, Sonic had always hated something like that. And the eight other turtles seemed either fanatic or stupid enough to do whatever their 'Emperor' told them… "Okay, why will they follow you?"

"Because it is in my power to let their fields grow fruits or lie deserted, it's in my power to let the springs they drink from flow or run dry, I decide over their lives. Oh yes, hedgehog, they will do whatever I want. They will pay their money, serve our customs, revive our culture."

Sonic's frown deepened another inch. "This is not right! Nobody should rule over others!"

The Emperor shook his head. "Somehow you two seem more alike than you look." He pointed at Knuckles. "He was talking similar rubbish about _honor _and _morals_. Ha!"

Knuckles threw a glance upwards. "Unlike you, we _have_ morals. And I made a promise to save the artifact you are searching for."

"I want to see you try," the emperor snickered. He leaned forwards again, stabbing his gaze at Sonic and Knuckles. "We found the globe already and soon we will gain control over its power. Unluckily for you two you had to appear in our way at a very unfavorable point in time. You were obstacles. First I hoped _Knuckles_" - his tone made the name sound like some kind of ugly bug -_ "_could know something we don't, something that old idiot could have known and told him, but that proved to be a false estimation." He swallowed a laugh. "Our attempts to get rid of you were unfortunately unsuccessful, so that you made it to this place. Although I don't understand what you want here."

Sonic looked up at him challengingly. "Maybe we are just curious."

The 'Emperor' chuckled. "Then your curiosity will be the sentence you put upon yourselves. No one can stop what the gods decided to be our fate." The turtle ran a hand over his white cape. "Before we go to the chamber that holds the globe and unleash its power, we have a small problem at hand to solve. You two. You were let into a secret that was not allowed to be told to anybody, you've come to this place and therefore, the only proper penalty is death." He waved a hand at his Servers. "Take them back to their cell. In two hours, judgment will be put upon them." The 'Emperor' threw a last gloatingly grinning glance at the prisoners. "Enjoy your last hours. It's a pity you will miss on the new rule that will lead this land from today on." He laughed.

The four turtles that had brought Sonic and Knuckles here stood up and stepped to their sides again.

Sonic shot a glance at Knuckles when they were escorted out of the room. Had he managed to get his hands free? He still held them behind his back, as if tied, but when Sonic looked closer, Knuckles pulled his hands loose for a second.

The hedgehog looked around, calculating their situation, considering if they should fight or better run first. His hands were still tied, but Knuckles was free. They were surrounded by guards, each of them holding a spear, two behind and two in front of them. Right now, they were nearing an intersection of five ways.

Knuckles leaned over at Sonic. "If you want to do something, do it now," he whispered.

Sonic gave a small nod, only visible to Knuckles. "Hold on to my shoulders."

"Hey, no talking. You can chatter in your cell!", one of the guards from behind interrupted.

A second later they reached the middle of the intersection. "Knux! NOW!", Sonic yelled, not leaving their enemies the time to think any further.

Knuckles grabbed Sonic's shoulders from behind and the hedgehog shot forwards. The sudden acceleration jolted Knuckles off his feet and the two guards that stood in Sonic's way to either sides.

Sonic ran forwards, taking the first tunnel he could. The hedgehog leaned forwards, struggling to keep his balance. With hands tied on his belly, that proved to be a problem.

"Sonic! Left!", Knuckles shouted into his ear.

Seeing that the next tunnel left indeed seemed the better route, Sonic took the turn with something between sliding and sidestepping, but couldn't avoid shaping with his right arm along the wall of the new path. He barely noticed the flow of blood on his upper arm and the red droplets that fell from his elbow.

Fortunately the tunnel they had picked was not as narrow and winding as the last one and Sonic sped up some more. The next turn that appeared on his way ended up as being taken more as a wallrun than an angle, but it worked better than the last.

After two minutes of rushing through small tunnels at neck-break-speed, taking whatever direction just appeared by chance, Sonic finally stopped. Knuckles let go of his shoulders and turned around, both of them listening. But they had lost their persecutors.

"Come here and let's get your bonds off," Knuckles suggested, still looking the way back they'd come through.

"Good idea. But the light is better over there," Sonic replied and took a step forwards, but suddenly he stepped on something slippery, his feet slid to the floor and he found himself falling into a small hole, then sliding and rolling down a kind of tube. "Whaaa!"

He bounced over some hard ground, his right ankle was caught by a protruding stone or whatever, spinning him around, so that he now tumbled down the tube head-first. Finding that this was a rather dangerous form of moving, Sonic curled into a tight ball.

Only a few seconds later, he hit something hard and the fall was over abruptly. Sonic uncurled with a groan and rolled around. For a moment he lay sprawled on his back, trying to figure out if all of his hands, feet and quills were still there. "Just what was that?", he mumbled, sitting up and looking around. "Hey, what is that place?"

He was sitting on the floor in front of a small stairway. Like in the most of the other tunnels, the ceiling somehow provided the room with a dim light. Behind him, the wall had a small hole.

Sonic stood up and immediately sat back down when stabbing pain flashed through his right foot. "Oh great," Sonic muttered when he carefully examined his foot. He grimaced. "As if I needed nothing more than a sprained ankle right now."

Slowly he pushed himself back to his feet. With only one good foot and his hands tied, this wasn't easy. Looking for a way out of wherever he had accidentally landed, Sonic tried getting up the tube he had fallen down through, but the rock was too slippery to get up the slope. He crawled one meter up and slid two back down.

Sonic cursed, then held his breath to calm himself. This was leading to nothing. "Okay, if that isn't the way out, I'll have to find another one." So Sonic took the only possible way and limped up the small stairs that had stopped his fall and along the tunnel that followed behind.

* * *

For now sure that they were alone and more or less safe, Knuckles turned around to help Sonic getting rid of the ropes.

But Sonic was gone.

"Sonic?" Knuckles walked to the next turn, but found no trace of the hedgehog. Confused the echidna went back. "Sonic? Hey, Sonic? Where are you?"

After two minutes of searching, Knuckles stopped in the middle of the tunnel he was in. Sonic had vanished, as if he'd gone through one of the walls. Remembering the trap where they had both fallen through the floor, Knuckles searched again.

Ten more minutes later, the echidna was completely disillusioned and gave up. This time, he had found around ten holes in the walls or the floor that were big enough for Sonic to fit through. He had yelled for the hedgehog through each of them, but gotten no answer.

What meant Sonic couldn't hear him. Maybe simply because he was somewhere Knuckles' voice didn't reach him, or he had hurt himself. Knuckles really hoped the first. Sonic was still tied and therefore slightly disabled, the run here had showed that clearly.

Frustrated Knuckles punched his fist at the wall next to him, creating a deep dent, then leaned against it and sighed. He had to search Sonic. And a way out of this stupid cave. He took a deep breath and pushed away from the rock, starting to walk along the tunnel again. Knuckles walked silently, only calling Sonic's name from time to time, but he didn't want to yell too loud. He wasn't really fond of attracting attention. The last time attraction had ended with arrows sticking into his flesh and him waking up in a dungeon. No, he _really _wasn't fond of attention.

After a while Knuckles' path ended at a stairway that led downwards. Slowly the echidna followed the winding steps, somehow always reckoning with some sort of threat to appear in front of him. But instead of meeting anyone, the stairs ended in a large chamber, filled with white light.

The source of the constant glow was situated in the middle of the room on some sort of shrine or pedestal. It was about half as big as the Master Emerald and perfectly round.

Violet eyes snapping open in astonishment, Knuckles stepped closer and circled the shining ball. Even as the light it emitted was bright enough to enlighten the entire room, he could look at it without being blinded by its brightness. The soft way it glowed had something lightly similar to an Emerald.

But everything else was different. Knuckles didn't dare to touch it, not knowing what powers it held, it could be dangerous. And in a strange way it really _felt_ dangerous to him. Somehow, looking at it, the red echidna knew he didn't want to be close to it when these 'Servers' and their insane 'Emperor' activated it.

Finally managing to get his eyes off the diamond globe, Knuckles regarded the altar it rested on. The socket was made of rock, but on one side showed two lines of white glowing pearls, looking a bit like jewelry, but they were clearly something else. Knuckles found that you could move the pearls on the lines, it were fifteen on each, but their glow changed if you moved them. Right now, they were situated as a glowing group of ten on the left side of the chains and five non-glowing on the right. Not wanting to do any damage without knowing how that whatever-it-exactly-was worked, Knuckles retracted his hands and focused his attention on his surroundings.

The walls were literally scribbled full of texts, but right now Knuckles was more interested in how to get out of here than in old letterings on a cave's wall.

Apart from the small stairway Knuckles had come through, the room had five other entrances, but all of them were locked by thick, rocky doors, painted with some kind of symbols. Knuckles tried opening them, but found nothing that looked like a key or anything else.

The echidna stopped in front of one of the doors, considering if he maybe should just try and punch his way through, when on the other side of the door, something hit the rock with a crash.

Knuckles winced back, reflexively dropping into a fighting stance, eyes tracking the rocky portal.

There was a moment of silence, then the crash came again. And again. And again and again and again and again and again. Then it got silent for about a minute, only to start over from the beginning.

"What the hell…?"


	10. Of Diamond And Water

**Of Diamond And Water**

Sonic didn't know how long he was walking - well, limping - through that small tunnel. He was alone, it was completely silent and the hedgehog was losing track of time.

And he was tired. Now that he was alone with himself and had no one to talk to, he finally noticed that the last days had taken their toll anyway. Not a big surprise though, first this trip through the desert, all these traps, the cold of the last night, walking trough all these tunnels, then being captured… this was a lot. Sonic had to admit that it was just natural that his body was crying for some rest.

But not here. This wasn't a safe place. Once he had found Knuckles and they had made it out of here safely and prevented that this turtle-freak could use that artifact and its power for his own aims, they could take a break.

After having heard what the 'Emperor' had said, Sonic still had no clue in what effort he wanted to use this power, but it couldn't be anything good. Sonic had heard enough insane ideas to know which one was dangerous, and that guy certainly was. And since there was nobody around besides Knuckles and himself, _they_ would have to solve this problem.

Sonic's thinking was interrupted when his path ended abruptly at a door. But a closed one. The hedgehog searched for a way to open it, but found none.

"Oh great. Escape out of one prison and get stuck in another. Nice job, Sonic," he muttered to himself.

The blue hedgehog knocked his knuckles against the door. It was solid and certainly thick. But – he had to get through this thing.

"Well, looks like there's no way to avoid violence this time," Sonic sighed.

He stepped backwards, massaged his shoulder, threw a doubting glance at his by now thickly swollen ankle, then shrugged the hesitation off and lowered himself to the floor, curling up and into a spin dash. After spinning on the spot for a moment, he launched himself at the door. Sonic hit it with a crash and was bounced back by his own momentum.

After picking himself up, Sonic regarded the door. "Great. Not even a dent." He groaned. "And here we go again."

Five minutes, forty spins and one huge headache later, the rocky door showed at least some big cracks.

"Okay," Sonic muttered dazed as he curled up again. "One last hit and that should do it."

The hedgehog started spinning and a blue ball of spikes smashed into the rock once again. But this time, it finally gave way. The door exploded forwards, shattering into a heap of pieces of rock and dust. Sonic was flung with it, landed on the heap and uncurled only to sink face-down on the rubbish.

His head was pounding angrily now, his hurt foot and shoulder complained loudly about the last minutes' actions and the rest of him was feeling outright muzzy.

"Sonic?!" Knuckles' confused shout pulled Sonic half out of his dazed stun. Hands grabbed his shoulders. "Sonic? Hey, are you okay?"

Sonic pushed himself to his hands and knees, coughing on all that dust, and looked up at Knuckles, blinking irritant out of his eyes. The echidna was kneeling aside of him and regarded him worried.

"I'm fine," Sonic assured him and tried standing up. "Owwwww…"

Knuckles grabbed him again, trying in the same time to steady the hedgehog and loosen the ropes that tied his hands. "Yeah, you look just great. What's the matter with your foot?"

Sonic gasped. "Fell into a hole. Twisted my ankle."

"Oh crap. Broken?"

Sonic shook his head. "No. But heavily sprained and bruised."

"Okay, come on here and sit down for a moment," Knuckles said and gently shoved Sonic over to a small tread. "Anything else? Apart from things I already know?"

Sitting down, Sonic shook his head and leaned against the wall at his side. "Only scratches. And _some_ headache."

Knuckles looked back at what was left of the door. "No surprise here. Relax for a moment. As far as I see, we don't have many ways out of here anyway. I guess that yours was a dead end in the other direction too, at least _I_ wouldn't knock my head into a rock multiple times if there was an easier way."

"I'm not masochistic, Knux," Sonic gave back and shut his eyes.

Knuckles swallowed the sarcastic comment he would have given to that usually and settled for a simple shrug Sonic couldn't see anyway.

* * *

While Sonic droopily sat on the treads, Knuckles passed the next minutes, in lack of anything else to do, with reading the writings on the walls.

It appeared some sort of legend or fairy tale. A story of gods and goddesses. And the history of an old culture. And while he was almost finished reading it, Knuckles slowly came to understand what the sense of that shining ball in the middle of the hall was.

"What's all that fuss about?"

Sonic's sudden question after minutes of silence caught Knuckles by surprise and he winced. "So, is your head better again?", the echidna asked.

Sonic shrugged, still sitting and without showing any intention of changing that position soon. "It's pounding now, but I guess it dulls slowly. At least I got rid of this jackhammer feeling."

"Nobody told you to crash something that is meant to contain brain against a door that certainly is much more solid than the stupid thing in question." Knuckles grinned. "Although I'm not too sure on how far it does contain brain…"

Sonic snorted. "Would you have any better ideas how the hell I should have gotten out of there, Knucklehead?"

Knuckles just grinned broader, ignoring the insult.

Sonic sighed. "If my foot wasn't currently telling me that jumping at you is a rather bad idea, I would." He shot Knuckles an acid glance and turned away, for the first time regarding the source of light in the room, his angry expression rapidly changing to astonishment. "Wow…"

Knuckles followed Sonic's gaze. "Yep, that's was I said I guess."

"So we found it. And apparently before the others did. Can we take it outta here or something?"

The echidna shrugged. "I don't think so. And I don't know if that would be a good idea."

Sonic looked back at Knuckles. "So, what's all that scribbling about?"

"It is a story. Some kind of religious text. A story about the gods the people that once built that place here believed in." Knuckles leaned against on of the pillars in the room and started telling to Sonic what he had found out. "The legend begins with something about the creation of the world. And then, there were two parties of gods. Good gods and bad gods."

"Of course. The usual crap," Sonic interjected.

Knuckles nodded. "The highest good god was the god of water. No idea why. His rival was the demon of storm."

"Sayhutao." This time Sonic nodded.

"Yes, exactly. They fought all the time. The god of water wanted to help people by providing their land with water. That's what the legends here say." Knuckles shrugged. "It's just a tale. But then it comes to a more … historical report or something. About the people who built that temple. For centuries the people living in this area here suffered from the droughts, until someone … built or found a mystical object that gave them the powers to stop these problems. The diamond globe." Knuckles pointed at the shining ball. "The land here is filled with water underground. We've seen that."

Sonic once again nodded. "And it was quite a lot."

"Naturally," Knuckles continued, looking at the wall again to support his memory, "the water of all the subterranean rivers comes to the surface at one point and creates a big lake. Underneath this lake, this temple was built. And in it the diamond globe was used to keep the temple safe and provide the country around with water. As far as I understood this, the globe can be used to control the flow of the rivers and how much of the water gets to the surface."

"Doesn't sound like something evil," Sonic stated and rubbed his nose.

"Generally, no. But it happened once that one of the priests guarding and using the diamond started to abuse its power. He drained the rest of the land of the water people needed to survive. And the land didn't recover for decades." Knuckles looked from the wall to Sonic.

"What happened?"

Knuckles looked back at the writings. "The priest who had abused his power was banned, but the people had seen how dangerous the thing they had built to help all of them was. And they started discussing if and how far they were allowed to intervene in the gods' work. They even discussed if the gods they were worshipping existed. Finally the highest priest claimed that the world would balance itself."

"So, they didn't want to manipulate the rivers here any longer?"

Knuckles nodded. "I guess so. And as we already know, the culture that created all of this doesn't exist any more. They left this place and… whatever." The red echidna shrugged.

Sonic frowned. "Then, why didn't they destroy the globe?"

"Some of them feared that it might be needed in the future. And I guess it still was a valuable treasure for them, a relict of their history. So they put it in the temple, which was now in the middle of a desert, and left. But a small group didn't want to give up on the power they had had. They thought it was a god-given power and their right to use it."

"The 'servers of the diamond'."

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. After it had been prevented that they could reach their aims, every follower of the prohibited diamond cult was banned from society and the diamond globe was from then on being guarded by a trustworthy person."

Sonic tilted his head. "The old guy you met? If he was the one, why did he leave here?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No idea. Maybe he thought nobody was left to know about that after all this time. Maybe he thought it was safe now."

"Or he got lonely here and left," Sonic continued guessing. There was just silence from Knuckles and Sonic glanced over at him. The echidna stared at the diamond globe, no, through it into an unknown infinity somewhere in space. And then Sonic realized that Knuckles must be very well able to understand these problems and that his words might have hit a tender spot. "Um… Knux?"

Knuckles blinked, being pulled out of his thoughts. "What?"

"Are you okay?", Sonic asked carefully.

The echidna looked at him for a few, long seconds, then nodded. "I'm fine. I just thought that I would never…" He didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't need to. Sonic knew if he had finished it, it would have ended with …

"I know," the hedgehog said. "Never doubted that." He smiled when Knuckles looked over at him. "I couldn't imagine you without that green oversized stone of yours."

Knuckles smirked and lifted a fist at the hedgehog in faked anger. "Watch out for what you're saying, or I'll give you some more of a headache!"

Sonic grimaced. "I better shut up."

Knuckles' smirk broadened. "You are actually considering shutting that big mouth of yours? Wow, rare pleasure. I'm starting to think that this door did you more well than harm. Maybe the knocks on your head put something back into place in there…"

Sonic grunted. "Very funny." But then he grinned too. "At least you are in the mood to be kidding around. Although this is a weird place and time to be joking." He quickly winked his hands at Knuckles. "Don't take me wrong, I appreciate jokes. And from you, this is – how did you phrase it – a rare pleasure. You know some more?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No. Maybe I'll be thinking about it."

Sonic finally stood up and slowly limped over to the middle of the hall and regarded the shining ball from a closer distance. He quickly discovered the small pearls on the side of the socket and reached out curiously. "Hey, these glow or stop glowing when you move them!"

Knuckles stepped to his side. "I found that out too. Don't touch them, I got no idea what will happen when we mess up the adjustment or something."

Sonic crossed his arms. "So you think it is some kind of control thing?"

Knuckles nodded. "I could imagine that it's a code."

"Code…" Sonic narrowed his eyes as he looked down on the pearls. Fifteen on each of two lines. Sonic chewed his lip, then lifted his gaze to the echidna aside of him. "You know what I'm thinking of?"

Knuckles just shook his head.

"All this crap with the numbers?"

Knuckles shook his head again.

Sonic groaned. "Having our slow day, what Knucklehead? And I thought I was the one who's got a sore head."

Knuckles gave him a thump. "Quit calling me that! More helpful would be telling me what came out of your insane brain now."

Sonic grinned, having provoked Knuckles once again easily, but continued talking. "Right from where we started, we always came across the stupid things about the numbers. Six and nine and so on. We agreed that the puzzle you were told was a location plan, right?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yes, every part described something on the way here. Although we figured that out _after_ we had been through all of this."

Sonic tilted his head, running a hand over his spiky head. "Nearly every part made sense later. Everything apart from the thing with the numbers."

"But he told me they were very important," Knuckles added.

Sonic nodded. "Right. We simply didn't have any clue what they could mean. But now that this looks like a code here…"

"Then why don't those guys use it to do whatever you can do with it?" Knuckles folded his arms.

Sonic looked at him. "Maybe they don't know about that."

"You mean…"

Sonic nodded. "Yes. Then you really do know something they don't. But you didn't tell them when they asked you while you were their prisoner, if on purpose or if you just forgot about that stuff for a while doesn't really matter I guess, and so they are as stupid as they were in the beginning."

Knuckles whistled through his teeth. "Back to the problem at hand," he suggested, "we can't get it out of here without risking something we can't control to happen."

Sonic nodded, serious again. "But we gotta think of something. We –" Sonic broke off when one of the not broken doors opened with the sound of rock scraping against the floor. Still standing aside of the diamond globe, Sonic and Knuckles whirled around.

"Ah, see who we have here again. How nice of you to join us again." The 'Emperor' gave a snort of laughter as he entered the room, followed by the eight others. Seeing how two of his underlings itched to get over to where Knuckles and Sonic were standing to arrest them again, he made a short wink. "They can't escape their fate. Nothing will be able to stand in our way now. And once we activated the globe, there won't be a way for these two to escape from here without us wanting them to." The turtle turned to Sonic and Knuckles. "Just step away from the diamond and you will be granted the mercy of seeing it a little longer before you die."

"What a pleasure," Sonic declared sarcastically.

Knuckles didn't answer. His mind was racing, struggling to make a decision, a decision of which he could not discern the results it would have. But he had made a promise for this diamond's safety, and he had _some _experience with powerful things being endangered of abuse. And he could very well remember being forced to break the Master Emerald apart to safe it. Sometimes security could only be achieved by destroying the power. In case of the Emerald, it had been a short destruction and he had restored it afterwards, but what he was going to do now was very likely to be permanent damage. But it looked like it had to be.

The echidna leaned down and his fingers pushed six of the pearls on the upper chain and nine of them on the lower to the side so that they glowed. Then he shoved Sonic away. The hedgehog didn't protest, having seen what Knuckles had done.

And the turtles had too. All of them darted to the pedestal with the shining globe. The ball had started spinning slowly. The three closed doors opened all on their own, revealing long, dimly lighted tunnels.

The 'Emperor' fumbled with the pearls again. Then he turned to look at Knuckles and Sonic. A deep rumbling had started to fill the cave. "You failed, you stupid fools," the turtle laughed maniacally. "You activated it for us! Thank you very much for that friendly favor. Did you really think you could escape us? Soon, we will carry out the judgment on you with the power we have now."

Sonic stared between Knuckles and the turtles. The eight servers were standing in line behind their leader, looking at the globe shining brightly, spinning on the pedestal. The small pearls were grouped and still showed the numbers six and nine, the ones Knuckles had adjusted. In the slight hope to better destroy that globe than letting the insane fanatics of this guild have the power over the source of live on the complete continent. If he had understood how to work this thing anyway… Knuckles still wasn't sure about that.

The echidna stepped closer to Sonic's side. "Do you hear that?", he whispered.

Sonic's ears twitched, then stopped abruptly when the constant deep rumbling mixed up with a faint sound of splashing, then quickly turned into thunder rolling through the cave. "What's that?"

"What I started, Sonic. The diamond globe is destroying itself. And I'm scared this place with it." Knuckles' eyes sparkled with a tiny hint of fear. "They were too slow." A small touch of satisfaction sneaked into Knuckles' voice in spite of the situation.

Sonic shuddered at the roaring growing ever louder and more threatening. Gooseflesh crept over his skin and he flattened his ears against his head.

The Emperor turned around. "What is happening?", he addressed his fellows, "The globe is supposed to give us control!"

The other turtles just shrugged.

And then Sonic saw it. Shooting towards them incredibly fast. Water, racing through the tunnels that had just opened, filling them completely. The noise was closing in to deafening level. "Knuckles! We gotta get outta here!"

"I know. But how?!" Knuckles' voice betrayed some of the panic Sonic himself felt.

Fear taking control of Sonic's body, his heart began pumping adrenaline through the hedgehog's veins. "Hold on to me!"

Knuckles stared at him. "Do you really think you can run on that foot of yours?!", he shouted, albeit taking hold around Sonic's shoulders.

"Do I want to drown?!", Sonic yelled back, knowing how hysterical he sounded. Right now, even _his_ ego didn't care.

Against the painful protest of his injured ankle, the hedgehog accelerated as fast as he could. Sonic bit down a scream of pain when his foot felt like it actually was on fire now, then found that the sound of water _everywhere_ and approaching ever so fast did a great job to help ignoring it.

With Knuckles clinging to his shoulders, Sonic ran, gathering speed with every meter he covered. He dashed out of the cave with the shrine through the door the turtles had come in just a few minutes ago and along the next tunnel.

Sonic shot a quick glace over his shoulder. The water was already nearly close enough to enable the thousands of flying drops to touch his legs.

"Sonic, faster!", Knuckles yelled over the noise of splashing thunder.

Faster?! For him it was easy saying so. It wasn't his foot screaming at him with every step. And at a few hundred miles an hour these were _a lot_ per second. A lot more than Sonic liked right now.

The hedgehog lowered his head and narrowed his eyes, desperation mobilizing energy that drowned out exhaustion and pain. Then Sonic's heart stopped beating for a second when the tunnel ended at a wall, only meters in front of him appearing behind a turn. Dead end.

Unable to stop, Sonic did the only thing he could do to prevent being killed by his own speed on impact. He ran even faster, eyes focused on the wall, then ducked a little and his feet met the vertical rock, catapulting his horizontal motion upwards.

Fearing to crash into the ceiling now, Sonic glanced up. They were in a big tube, winding upwards, the former wall now a steep slope. And Sonic's eyes widened with surprise.

He saw light. Daylight. The blue sky.

And seeing it as a light of hope at the end of this tunnel, Sonic ran even faster, putting in all his energy and strength.

But he was slowing, even though his heart threatened to burst his ribs and his feet were humming on the rock just as fast. He was slowing. And the water was closing in, rocketing up the tube of stone, wet hands reaching out to pull the hedgehog in.

Sonic fought as hard as he could, but he couldn't make it. Wetness touched his feet, swallowing them, then his legs. Sonic staggered, then fell backwards with a yelp.

Cold liquids surrounded him, blurring his vision and inclining his ears. Sonic struggled helplessly, panicking with all that water around him.

He needed a moment to realize the hard grip under his armpits. Turning his head, Sonic saw a blurry shape of red. 'Please Knuckles! Don't let go!, Sonic begged silently.

The hedgehog's vision was growing dark, when suddenly his head broke through the surface and he gasped.

"Sonic! Okay, chill out! I gotcha," Knuckles shouted at him, trying to pull him out of headless panic.

Sonic looked over his shoulder, finding Knuckles holding one arm around him and keeping the two of them up by paddling with his second arm and both feet. The hole in the rock above was closing in quickly when the water carried the two friends upwards.

"I'm all calm," Sonic managed, his shaky voice promptly making him a liar.

"Good," Knuckles replied, ignoring the obvious fear in Sonic's tone respectfully, "I am, too."

The small glimpse of daylight exploded into brightness all around them. For a second or less, Sonic was shooting up into the air, his stomach feeling like being turned upside down, then he crashed into the water again. The impact knocked the breath out of Sonic's lungs and reflexively the hedgehog gasped. What proved to be a big mistake. Instead of air, he swallowed water.

Hands grabbed him and pulled him up to air again. Sonic coughed violently. It needed a felt eternity for his breathing to calm. Exhausted the hedgehog went limp, simply trusting his life into Knuckles' hands.

"Sonic? Still with me?", the echidna asked worried almost into Sonic's ear.

The hedgehog opened his eyes again. Knuckles was paddling in front of him, holding under his armpits to keep Sonic up too.

"I'm okay," Sonic gasped.

Knuckles slowly nodded. "That was close." For a moment the echidna allowed the hedgehog some quiet to recover a bit, then he spoke again. "Sonic? We need to move."

"Huh?" Sonic finally looked around. They were surrounded by water as far as he could see. The water of the subterranean rivers had found a way to the surface and flooded the formerly dry basin. "Whhaaa!"

"Hey, hey, hey, chill out. I gotcha," Knuckles tried calming him. _Damn hydrophobia._ "I'm a good swimmer and the lake isn't endless. The next embankment has to be a few miles from here."

"Miles?" Sonic took a deep breath, trying to get his pulse to something approaching normal.

"Yeah, but don't panic." Knuckles' violet eyes met Sonic's. "We can make it."

Sonic slowly nodded. "O…okay."

"Good. I can't swim like this. Can you hold on to my shoulders so I can carry you?" Knuckles nodded at his back.

"I think so." Sonic took hold on Knuckles' back, placing one of his hands on each of the echidna's shoulders. "Do you want me to do something?", he asked, starting to feel a little more at ease.

"You could paddle your feet," Knuckles answered when he started swimming.

Sonic tried and grimaced. "You mind if I only paddle one of them?"

Knuckles snickered with comprehension. "No."


	11. Refuge

_Author's note: _

_Hello to all of you! This chapter is the last one for this story and therefore I want to use this little note to say thanks to all of you for reading. A bigbig THANX goes to all reviewers who took their time to give me critique, praise, hints, their opinion, and here and there put up the one or other helpful sign to prevent me from getting lost in the jungle of English language.__  
As this is the final chapter, I'd of course still appreciate feedback, on the chapter or the complete story…  
Then I guess I just say I hope you had as much fun reading as I had writing. Maybe see you next story. For now, have a nice time with the final chapter ,-)_

_Speedy_

_

* * *

  
_

**Refuge **

The sky above was slowly turning purple and the sun was nearing the horizon.

Sonic shifted to look past Knuckles' head, trying to get a view on the nearest land and guess the distance. It was closing in, but a lot slower than the hedgehog would appreciate. His shoulder was starting to hurt again from having to hold on to Knuckles all the time and his ankle did anyway.

Neither of the two friends had been speaking in the last half an hour. Sonic was feeling outright exhausted and he knew Knuckles was tiring too. His movements had been a lot smoother some time ago.

The blue hedgehog paddled his left foot again, trying to ease his weight for Knuckles, although he had no idea how _that_ should work.

* * *

When Knuckles' feet finally touched solid ground, the echidna was more than relieved to be able to stop swimming. He stood in the chest-high water and felt Sonic letting go of his shoulders.

"So, you see: we made it," Knuckles smiled at the hedgehog.

"Was about time. Thank you Knux." Sonic grinned, at least as relieved as Knuckles was. He made a step forwards and almost collapsed into the water when pain flashed through his foot. "Ouch!"

Knuckles' hands caught Sonic again, pulling the hedgehog's right arm around his shoulders to back him. "Your foot's not good, is it?", Knuckles asked unnecessarily as he walked the last meters out of the water.

"No." Sonic gritted his teeth. "Didn't like running that much I guess."

Knuckles helped Sonic over at a small rock. "Let me have a look."

Sonic sat down heavily, then gasped in pain when Knuckles grabbed his hurt foot.

The echidna pulled off the wet shoe and examined Sonic's ankle. "Can you move it?"

Sonic gave a half nod. "I could run on it, remember?"

"Vaguely." Knuckles felt over the ankle while moving it a bit. Sonic winced. "Sorry. – It is swollen a lot and starts getting blue of the bruises. You'll have some fun with it the next week."

Sonic grimaced when Knuckles finally let go. "Thanks for the motivation. You really know how to cheer a guy up."

Knuckles shrugged, ignoring Sonic's retort completely. "I'm afraid we have no bandages for it. Ice would be good too."

Sonic looked up at him. "I don't think that cooling will be a problem. We already encountered the nights out here."

Knuckles nodded. And they were both soaking wet. And they were sitting on rock and sand in the middle of nowhere. Not even something to light a fire. Nor anything to eat.

In short form, they were in some really deep crap.

Sonic took his shoe back on, then both of them stared out over the lake, reflecting on the latest events.

"What do you think happened to them?", Sonic's question broke the silence.

"The water filled the tunnel systems. As the texts on that wall said, the diamond globe destroyed itself and its temple. The only way out of there was the one we took. And since we saw none of them swimming… I also doubt that any other people would have been fast enough to make it out," Knuckles gave back emotionless. He was unable to feel any pity for the turtles. It felt almost good to know they were… The echidna shook his head against himself, drops of water flying from his wet spines. This was no honorable way of thinking.

Sonic nodded, looking out over the new lake. It seemed like it had been there for eternity, nothing indicated that only two hours ago it had been a desert basin of rock and dry sand.

"I didn't actually do a good job at securing the diamond globe…" Knuckles said quietly after a moment of silence. "Do you think I kept it?"

"Your promise? I think so. He wanted you to make sure it won't be getting in the wrong hands. When he asked you for your help, he gave you not only the description of the way here; you were the only person told that code. He gave you the code it needs to destroy the diamond globe, right?" Sonic looked out at the lake. "Now it's burried under a huge lake. Nobody will ever find it. And since there is no longer a thing to manipulate the subterranean water out here, the lake will stay where it is. That's what the texts in that chamber said, isn't it?"

Knuckles nodded slowly. "Yeah. All the water that was kept out of the tunnels and the basin by the diamond globe now went back where it naturally belongs."

"Maybe he wanted you to destroy it all along." Sonic glanced up at Knuckles.

"We'll never know," Knuckles mumbled. For several minutes he just looked silently out over the water, turning black with falling darkness. A cold breeze blew through Knuckles' fur. "We can't stay here," the red echidna noticed.

"I know." Sonic nodded, but looked hesitantly at his foot.

"Come on. I'll help you." Knuckles struck his hand out at Sonic and pulled the hedgehog to his feet, then backed him again.

Slowly they started walking into the night's desert without having any idea where they went.

And Sonic didn't really care. He was tired, the increasing cold of the night was creeping into his wet fur, his head still hurt, his foot felt like every step stabbed a dagger into the ankle and the not small amount of bruises and scrapes he had gained in the last days didn't improve the situation. And he was dying of hunger. Right now he would have eaten almost everything. But as it seemed, nothing in reach happened to be on even that long list.

Knuckles threw a side-glance at the blue hedgehog as they walked for minutes in silence, somehow both of them too exhausted to talk. Sonic was limping badly now and Knuckles could see the pain scrunching up his face even in the dim light of the now rising moon. "How's you foot?", the echidna started.

"It's nothing, don't worry," Sonic gave back, giving his best to hide another wince.

"I've seen a nothing before and it doesn't look like that. How about if I carry you for a while?"

Sonic frowned. "You're as tired as I am," he contradicted, "I can deal with it."

Knuckles shook his head. "You're slowing us down. Really Sonic, this doesn't help us. _You_ are in pain and in _that_ pace we'll never get out of this desert."

Sonic looked up at him finally. "That's the first time someone tells the fastest thing alive he's slowing the pace."

"So that's it? Pride?" Knuckles smirked. He knew that feeling himself, very well he did. "I won't tell anybody. It doesn't count, you're injured."

Sonic considered that for a moment. "Okay," he finally knuckled under, his piercing foot deciding over his head. "And you're sure you can carry me around here?"

"I carry the Master Emerald. You weigh nothing, Sonic." Knuckles let go of his grip around Sonic's shoulders and turned his back to the hedgehog. "Get on."

"This is the first time I'm riding piggy-back with someone," the hedgehog noticed with a small, embarrassed grin when Knuckles started walking again.

"Don't worry. We won't let this become a habit," Knuckles replied dryly.

* * *

Sonic lifted his head when a small sound drilled itself into his half dozing mind. Two pointy ears twitched. "Knuckles?"

The echidna nearly winced at the sudden word. Nobody had been talking in the last half an hour, and the way Sonic had been getting heavier on his back showed Knuckles that the hedgehog had been struggling to stay awake. "What's up?"

"I guess I heard something."

Knuckles stopped walking and listened. "What?"

"Dunno." Sonic closed his eyes as he strained his sharp ears. "There…. Wheels?"

"Wheels? Really? So we are coming to a road?"

"Too small sound," Sonic contradicted. "Must be a lone car or something."

"Think we can catch it?"

Sonic grimaced. "You? Maybe. I? Certainly not."

"Okay, eh, then so you want me to try? And you wait here?", Knuckles suggested as Sonic slid off his back.

Sonic nodded, balancing on his good foot. "We need some help, Knux. Go."

The echidna nodded back and turned around to run towards the source of the sound. He tried to listen well enough to calculate where it would be in a few minutes while he ran.

Only one minute later, Knuckles spotted two small pinpricks of light somewhere out in the plain on his left. Nearly at the same time, his feet hit some kind of bumpy road or course. Considering that the car should come that way, Knuckles stopped.

He didn't need to wait for long. A dusty pickup slowly came along the tiny road, when the light found the echidna, the car was stopped. Knuckles jogged over to its side, feeling himself tense a little, not knowing if he would get help or hostility. He was suspicious by nature anyway. Something that maybe had come with being a guardian for his entire life.

A suricate leaned out of the window, if it had no glass or was simply open all the time was impossible to tell. The face of the owner showed a slightly greying fur; he obviously wasn't the youngest. Brown and friendly eyes looked the echidna up and down with a mixture of surprise and curiosity.

"Good evening, Mister," Knuckles began.

"Good evening," the suricate replied and a second face appeared in the window, one of a female. "Hello," she said cheerily.

"What are you doing out here? This is no good place to stay at," the man continued speaking, once again regarding Knuckles. "Do you need help?"

Knuckles nodded wearily, somehow glad that they offered it and so he didn't have to ask. It always made him feel uncomfortable, although he knew Sonic was right and they quite certainly needed it.

"Did you get lost?", the woman asked curiously.

"Eh … Not really." Knuckles tilted his head. He pointed out to where he had left Sonic. "I'm not alone. I got a friend out there who's injured."

"Oh dear", the female suricate hissed.

"Okay, Annie," the man addressed her, "I guess these boys need some help." He turned back to Knuckles. "If you like, we take you to our farm."

"We have some guest rooms to rent for holiday visitors, but at the moment this isn't the season and we have no guests," the woman added eagerly as if she'd been just waiting to tell Knuckels about that.

Bewildered the echidna looked between the two in the vehicle. He didn't really know what to say to this. He had not expected such an open offer for help. Either the people living on the lonely farms out here were friendly by nature or he had got a lucky shot. "Err … thanks."

"Oh, don't mind, we're always...", the woman started, but couldn't get far with the flow of words before she was interrupted.

"Quit chattering and hand me the blanket underneath the seat," the suricate teased his – wife as Knuckles supposed. "We can talk later." He pointed at the echidna. "He's cold and his friend will be too."

Still somewhat dumbfounded Knuckles just stood and watched as the two suricates got out of their car. The man was a bit smaller than he was. Now he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around Knuckles' shoulders without bothering to consult him about that. The woman, a slightly round figure wearing a colorful dress, stepped up to them and handed the man something wooly.

"Come on and let's get your friend," the male suricate suggested.

Knuckles nodded and led him back the way he had come. "Thanks a lot," he said finally regaining his speech. "You can say we are kinda in trouble."

"No problem; I've been living out here my entire life and was taught that we need to help each other here." The elder smiled friendly. "My name's Frank and my wife's called Annie."

Knuckles hesitantly held out his hand at the suricate. "I'm Knuckles, Knuckles the Echidna. Nice to meet you."

Frank shook his hand and smiled.

Knuckles pointed forwards. "And that's Sonic."

The hedgehog was sitting on a big rock, looking at them in the bright moonlight. "Hi," he said simply; shivering by now, sitting still he had gotten really cold.

"Hello." The man leaned down and put the blanket he had brought around the hedgehog. "Can you walk?"

Sonic grimaced. "Not really. I got a sort of bad foot..."

"Okay." Frank helped Knuckles pulling Sonic up and they stepped to his sides, so that he could lean onto them and take the weight off his injured foot. Then they slowly walked back to the road.

After Sonic had been introduced to the two suricates, Annie smiled at him and Knuckles. "I'm afraid you have to ride the loading space. But it's not too far, and once we're home I'll make you some nice warm tea and a good meal. And we got enough place for you to stay at for the night."

Sonic grinned wearily. "Sounds like heaven to me."

* * *

And it really felt like heaven too. Twenty minutes later Sonic and Knuckles were sitting on a couch in a living room, the warmth of the house finally drying the last dampness out of their furs. The house was simple, but Sonic had absolutely no eyes for the furniture. He had only eyes for one thing. A big plate full of warm, tasty food in front of him. And as through a miracle, it was filling itself ever and ever again until he was all filled up and sank against the back of the sofa, palming over his finally - after days of what seemed to have been constant growling to him - satisfied stomach.

Annie smiled at the two guests, apparently happy about the healthy appetite both of them showed. "The two of you must have been half starved," she smiled when she removed the dishes.

"How long have you been out there?", her husband demanded curiously.

"About three days," Knuckles answered, leaning back slowly, beginning to feel a little at ease here.

"But pretty exiting days," Sonic added.

The suricate looked at him. "Yes, you kinda look like if you've been through some sort of adventure."

Knuckles nodded. "You can say so, yes."

"But you can tell us later. If you want to." The female interrupted Frank before he could ask for any details. "It's after midnight. And our guests here are looking tired."

Sonic couldn't help it but nod. He was more than looking forward to a place to sleep at, no matter _what kind_ of place. He would have taken almost every spot, even the bathtub or something. As long as nobody got the idea to fill it with water of course. He had really had enough of the terrible wet stuff for _quite _a while.

Knuckles stood up too, backing his friend again when they followed their hostess out of the living room. She led them up a stairway and opened the first door of a corridor, directing them into a small room with two beds, a small skylight that offered a glimpse at the starry sky, and a door that led to a bathroom.

The hedgehog sat down on one of the beds as soon as he was given the chance. The suricate regarded him briefly, then pointed to the bathroom. "In the cupboard there should be a first-aid-kit," she said. Then she continued telling them what she could get if it was needed. After five minutes Knuckles finally closed the door behind her after she had wished them goodnight.

Sonic flopped onto the bed. "Man, I thought she was going to talk for the rest of the night." The hedgehog scooted up on the bed until his head sank into a deep pillow. Sonic sighed as he lay flat on his back, spread-eagled. "I needed that," he declared almost dreamily.

Knuckles looked down on him. "I could say the idea doesn't sound bad," he admitted. "But before we both drop off here, we have to do something for that foot of yours. And some of these scratches don't look too well either if you ask me."

Regretting deeply having to interrupt the relaxation just starting to be enjoyable, Sonic half sat up and pulled off his gloves, socks and shoes, all of them still damp. He dropped them to the floor and sank back into the bed, not really caring about anything at all by now. Not even about his throbbing foot. "Knux?", he asked at the sound of water from the bathroom to where the echidna had just disappeared. "What are you doing?"

Knuckles walked back into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed aside of Sonic's feet. "Drenching these bandages."

Sonic frowned. "What for?"

"Firstly: Cooling. Secondly: Wet bandages tighten on drying." Knuckles grabbed Sonic's hurt foot and the hedgehog winced. "Hold still."

Sonic gritted his teeth while Knuckles wrapped up his ankle. When the echidna finally put the foot down after what felt like days, Sonic relaxed with a sigh of relief and closed his eyes; his tired body melting into the bed.

Not seeming to notice, Knuckles grabbed his right arm, eying the deep scrapes and dried trails of blood on it. "Have you ever been thinking about your speed being too fast for your own well-being?"

"Huh?", Sonic wondered, one eye half opening again.

"When you scraped along that wall, you ripped off half of your skin and burned what's left of it." Knuckles reached for a wet tissue to clean the injury.

"Ouch," Sonic muttered, groggily squinting up at the echidna. "Watch it, Knucklehead."

Knuckles shrugged, for once able to ignore the insult. "I can let you do this yourself, but the way you look at me right now makes me think you'd rather fall asleep in the progress than getting yourself patched up properly."

"Hm." Sonic shut his eyes again with a grunt, missing on Knuckles' grin. He didn't really notice how Knuckles started wrapping another bandage around the now once again bleeding arm.

"So, ready," Knuckles said after a minute and laid the first-aid stuff down on a small table. The rest was only minor scratches and could do without plastering. When the expected sarcastic comment about sadistic echidnas failed to appear, he looked down on Sonic. The hedgehog's head was softly tilted against the pillow and the way he lay completely relaxed showed he was already fast asleep.

Knuckles sighed. "Great. Having you falling asleep on me is really beginning to become a routine." He reached for one of the blankets, unceremoniously throwing it over the snoozing hedgehog. "That spiky idiot is lucky I can understand him," the echidna muttered, switched off the lights in the room, seized a blanket for himself and fell backwards into the second bed. He took a long deep breath and slowly released it again, letting out the pressure of the last weeks, feeling both his body and mind finally relax. He knew he would lose a fight against tiredness as fast as Sonic had, but Knuckles didn't plan on fighting. He just closed his eyes, knowing that sleep wouldn't need to work hard to pull him into its grip.

* * *

"And there we were, behind us a wall of terribly sharp spikes, crystal daggers, all of them just waiting to stab us like marshmallows on sticks to burn in the desert sun. And from ahead, the storm was getting ever stronger and stronger…" Sonic stopped speaking, looking at his listeners, enjoying the increasing suspense.

The two suricates and Tails stared at Sonic breathlessly, unable to take their eyes off the blue hedgehog sitting on one of the chairs, his injured foot resting on a soft cushion on a second.

"And? What did you do, Sonic?" Tails glanced from Sonic to Knuckles, slumped leisurely into his chair; the echidna of course knew the story already. "Knuckles? Say something! Sonic is killing us!"

Knuckles snickered and shook his head. "I'm no storyteller. I leave that kind of fun to Sonic."

Sonic inclined his head at the echidna. "Very much thanks." He grinned.

"Soooniiic!" Tails leaned from his chair and extracted a hand in the direction of Sonic's bandaged ankle, playfully trying his best faking a threatening look. "Tell us what happened or…"

"Tails!" The female suricate shook her head at the newest guest.

Sonic laughed. "Okay, okay, I surrender to the forces of violent oppression!" Grinning broadly, the blue hedgehog continued retelling their desert adventure.

It was late afternoon. Sonic and Knuckles had slept till after midday and then they had called Tails on the radio set in the Tornado. Now all of them were sitting together with their hosts on the small veranda of the house, eating a tasty and fresh cake, enjoying themselves and Sonic was retelling the events of the last days.

After a while Annie stood up to remove the used dishes. Sonic had just reached the point when he and Knuckles met the turtles a second time. "And then they shot us with arrows and sedated us. When we woke up in a cell, we had a terrible headache and then they wanted to put a death penalty on us for knowing about their secrets and –"

"Hold on!" Frank stood up and gave Sonic a wink. "Give us a rest! I need a drink on such a story!" He helped his wife with the dishes, then turned to the three guests. "Can I get you some more juice or something?"

"Sounds great!", Sonic replied and the two others nodded agreeing.

The three friends remained alone on the veranda. "Next time I'm coming with you!", Tails declared.

Sonic nodded. "Okay, deal."

"What do we do now that this adventure is over?", Tails asked.

Knuckles tilted his head. "I gotta go back to Angel Island. I have –"

"We know," Sonic and Tails interrupted him in unison, "an Emerald to guard!"

Knuckles stared into their grinning faces. "Eh… you say it…"

"Oh, come on Knux! We had such a nice adventure. And we did great." Sonic grinned. "Come on, how about a little holiday. You deserve it after all that. You can't just always work."

"Yeah, everybody needs a day or two off sometimes," Tails added, smiling at Knuckles.

"I don't know if I…"

Sonic sighed and turned to the fox. "Tails? Did the Master Emerald look as if it planned to get stolen in the next days?"

"Nope! The Emerald is absolutely safe. Nobody's on the Island and it floats securely above the ocean. No enemies around. No thieves. And no monsters!" Tails counted the non-existing threats to the big gem up on his fingers.

Sonic grinned satisfied, turning back to the red echidna. "See? Perfect conditions for a small vacation. Come on, it will be fun! Just the three of us, we can do whatever we want!"

Knuckles looked at the others, at Sonic's typical cheerful grin, Tails' blue pleading eyes and the playfully twirling tails, and felt his resistance melting away. It couldn't hurt if he hung out with them for a little while now, could it? "Okay, a few days," the echidna gave in.

Tails and Sonic exchanged a high-five.

"But just if one thing is clear," Knuckles continued.

"What?" Sonic casually ran his fingers through his quills.

"We make holidays, with stuff that is fun. And we don't do any of these neck-break things Sonic usually wastes his free time on. I won't do any bungee-jumping or skydiving or anything else as insane. I risked my neck enough in the last time. And unlike you, I got a responsibility."

Sonic gave Knuckles a friendly thud. "I know. You got an Emerald to guard." The hedgehog grinned as he lifted one hand. "Okay, I swear here and at that very moment that we will do only things all of us consider as fun, that I won't feed you any chili dogs and that we won't endanger your Emerald."

Knuckles nodded. "Deal."

"Intentionally," Sonic added and had to duck quickly when Knuckles sent a punch at him.


End file.
